The Incredible Charlie Carewe (37 page)

On the floor of the display window was a small card announcing in lower-case letters: “kay orcutt—interiors”—which humbly gave the spotlight to a Calder mobile suspended in front of a blue-black flocked background. The area was stunningly lighted, so that the mobile seemed to float in pure, limitless atmosphere; the window was canted forward, and no mundane reflections betrayed a barrier. The display said no to the budget-minded, it said yes to those who were willing to “Just let Kay take over, darling, she’ll really
do
something for you,” even though it meant a reconstruction job and a six-month wait for hand-crafting. The reception room was paneled and furnished like a small sitting room, hushed with carpeting and deep chairs, decorated with one blazing Miró and a wall of leather-bound portfolios. There was a desk in the corner, piled high with papers, orders, clip boards, samples, and swatch cards, over which presided an elderly woman who looked like someone’s Aunt Josephine, who calmly answered the phone, and as calmly refused to be disturbed by Kay’s screaming or the disorder of the desk to which Kay constantly contributed. To the rear were Kay’s living quarters, a squirrel nest of all her years of collecting furnishings, fabrics, works of art, people, and things. She was served by a heavy-set, swarthy gentleman who looked like an aging gangster but who was “perfectly sweet” and a “heavenly cook,” and who was luckily immaculate and tireless.

She and Charlie were seated in the “functional area” of the terrace. Comfortable but anachronistic platinum and chrome furnishings jarred the studied serenity of what Kay called “my monastery garden.” Nearby, quite nearby, a bell in a cathedral sonorously tolled the hour.

“Five o’clock! For Christ’s sake, Josef, hurry it up! We’re dying of thirst!” she yelled. Not unkindly, but her voice echoed from the dark stone walls where a fountain spoke gently to the ancient bronze figure of a robed saint. Only a single shaft of hot sunlight managed to squeeze between the buildings and then was broken in the branches of a twisted olive tree, but Kay mopped her face with Charlie’s handkerchief.

“Poor
baby!
” she said to Charlie. “What do they do—just
sit
on all that money?” She was concealing the fact that she had just had quite a shock. Charlie had tapped her for a loan, out of all limits for even her generous checkbook. No longer attractive, Kay was willing to pay for her amusement, to lavish quite nice presents on young men in return for having them sit at her feet, take her to the theater and/or to bed. She had been proud of what she thought was a real catch. “Not so damn young, darling,” she had said about him, “someone who looks like he might like old Kaysie for herself alone, and he’s got simply
pots!
” Now it was apparent that the pots were quite empty, but because he was fun company and “divine in the hay” she was stalling.

“I think I met your sister once—years ago. I had a consultation with her husband—Shelley, wasn’t it? Yes, that’s right. Crippled, poor dear, but a fine artist—I did the penthouse offices for his Stapleton building job—— Ah! Here we are! Not too sweet now, I hope, Josef? Skoal!”

Charlie was looking moody. He was feeling the pinch badly. For a while—a year or so—people had lent him money with a “Think nothing of it, old boy,” but when time passed and it was not returned, the word got around fast. He had tried once to bounce a check back on his father, but it hadn’t worked; he’d kept his word, the damned skinflint, and Charlie had to borrow to cover it.

Kay was brand-new material, although so unattractive it made him want to laugh. She had very strong prominent teeth and rather thin lips, which gave her a candid, smiling, jolly look. But kissing her was a strange experience, and somewhat dangerous. It was a little like kissing the side of a broken teacup, and so usually he would slide his lips down and around to the softer plumpness of her second chin.

Now he sat on a plastic cushion at her feet, holding one of her palms up to his cheek. That way the bangles would drop out of the way.

“Kay, I honestly think I’ll kill myself. . . . No, I’m not kidding,” as she protested, “if I have to go back and live in that stuffy little town of old fogies, just to survive!”

“Well, don’t you have any friends of your own—there are some divine people I know who always go up for the summer at least—I just don’t understand you, Charlie darling. It looks to me as though you were in clover, compared to some of the boys I know.” She drew back to look at him. “Or is it—maybe your family doesn’t want you around, is that it? Maybe you disturb the so-called even tenor of their ways?”

“Oh, God, no!” Charlie protested. “On the contrary, Mum says they come to life when I’m there, she has begged me to stay, especially since my wife died.”

“What about the others? What about ‘the creep’ as you call him—Gregg something?”

The mention of Gregg’s name set up a new pattern in Charlie’s mind, and his face was blank for a moment. Gregg—Gregg and Larry Payne—hey! Why hadn’t he thought of that before?

Assuming his expression to be one of discreet silence, Kay chuckled. “Ah, that’s it, isn’t it? He’s moved in, hasn’t he? Taken over your rightful position. Sucking up to the old folks, brother, I know the type! You’re just too much of a gent, that’s the trouble with you—why don’t you just kick the son of a bitch out of there. . . .”

“He’s in Washington now. Can’t kick him out when he’s not there,” said Charlie vaguely.

“Well . . .” Kay pushed her heavily corseted hips out of the chair, and stood up impatiently. “Christ, Charlie—you’ve got to solve your own problems! I can’t do it for you. Nor do you get much sympathy from me, when you’ve got a heavenly place like that to live. I’d give anything to get a peek at some of the furnishings!”

Charlie rose to his feet with alacrity. It wouldn’t do to have Kay sore at him. The place was a lot better than a hotel, and all his things were spread around. It would be a major job—and probably an emotional one—if he moved out now.

“Now, now, now,” he spoke soothingly, “I’m sorry I even mentioned my troubles. I should have kept them to myself, I know. I feel like hell, asking you this, but I’m so damned stymied, it’s embarrassing.” He dug his hands into his pockets and, stepping off the terrace, he strode out to the fountain, where he dipped his fingers into the water and idly flicked drops into the contemplative face of the saint.

Kay teetered after him on needlepoint heels, all her bangles clashing and jingling. It was her turn to be soothing. She came up behind him and put her plump arms around his waist, holding him firmly.

“My poor baby darling—I hate to see you so down. Come on now, sweetie, we’ve got to get changed. Liz and R.D. are coming over for dinner and Steve and Binnie later.”

She loosed her viselike grip on him and turned him around by his shoulders to look at his sulky face. “Shall we eat out here, or do you think it would be cooler in the dining room? You need a shave, darling. Wow, you get black in this hot weather.” She rubbed his beard with her fingers, making little appreciative noises about his masculinity. “Mmm, I love it—but we must bow to convention, mustn’t we!”

He looked down at her with his quick-change trick of adoring warmth. “Let me have a thousand, just for the moment, Kay-day? I feel naked with empty pockets.”

Kay was still smiling apparently—at least her lips were spread in the shape of a smile and her teeth were dazzling. “Well,” she said, “that’s quite a comedown from a couple of hours ago, isn’t it? Do you expect to start with a thousand and work up?”

With that he picked her up by her elbows to meet his height, took a chance with the teeth, and began to whirl her around the garden, till she was squealing and laughing.

He was in enormous good humor the rest of the evening, playing the perfect host, helping Josef with drinks, keeping the record player stacked; and his habit of laughing in a kind of astonishment at anyone’s jokes was intoxicating to the one relating them. He would say, choking, “I
never
heard that—it’s heaven!” and search the speaker’s face in amazement, as though he were the discovery of the year from an amusement standpoint.

Kay watched him solicitously taste a freshly mixed drink of Binnie’s to see that it was just right, and thought to herself, “How easily pleased he is. Like a child.” And tenderly she decided to up his request and make it twenty-five hundred.

Charlie hit the peak of the morning traffic over the Queensboro Bridge on his way to an address in Forest Hills. He was still driving an “old” car—last year’s model. It represented about the last of his negotiable assets. To be reduced to selling the paintings he had in storage from his and Zoë’s apartment in order to have operating cash was a tedious and undignified business. It involved shopping around for a buyer, time-wasting bargaining, to get a few miserable bucks just to have money enough to buy things like a car! Several times he had thought of how simple it would be to alter the amount of the checks he received from various sources, but he had refrained because he wouldn’t risk the possibility of getting himself locked up. No, Charlie boy had to be free—free as the air.

Sometimes he wanted to howl, to scream in the irritation of the pursuit of money; at the ingratitude of one’s friends and especially one’s family. And most especially Dad, lavishing money that rightly belonged to him on a young punk about whom, when you came right down to it, he knew nothing. Wouldn’t it be a big joke if John weren’t his grandson. He often thought that Mavis had probably pulled the wool over their eyes; of course he did have a strong family resemblance, but that could be just a happy coincidence. Happy for them.

The last time Charlie had seen John he thought he had developed a pretty sly look about him. He’d just come back from a month with his mother and was spending the last couple of weeks before school with the folks. But God, how cheeky he’d become! He had shown no real affection toward him, his own father! It was Grandmum this and Granddad that and big secret jokes with Aunt Virginia. He’d felt like a damned outsider in his own home.

A taxi’s impatient hooting behind him made him turn and swear at the driver, who replied in kind. He looked at the clock on the dashboard. His appointment with Larry was for ten—he’d make it easy once he got over the damned bridge. Another hot day, and everybody’s tempers would be at the boiling point. He hoped Larry would have a shot of something in his office. The party last night was still a little foggy, and he had a slight hangover. More people had arrived at Kay’s, real weirdies, all talking shop. God, how could Kay put up with those pansies; but as she said, “I don’t give a hoot for their sex life, darling; they have brains and talent; I’m useful to them and they’re useful to me.” He’d almost got into a fight with one of them—or did he actually punch him? No matter; in a little while he could shake the dust of
that
joint from his feet! That silly bitch with her stinking twenty-five hundred bucks. Peanuts! She had no conception of what real money was like. Her whole life was wrapped around a dollar sign. She should come up to Nelson and see how people behave who had important money, people who didn’t “redo” their houses all the time just to show their friends that they were well off; who didn’t sail around in minks and diamonds just to prove something. They bought furs to keep warm and jewelry was a sign of someone’s regard—like Mum’s beautiful tiny pearls, which she’d worn as long as he could remember, that Dad had given her for an anniversary. Not that he spent money like that these days. He didn’t cry poor, of course. He just wouldn’t part with any dough. He’d give him that flat look and say what he’d said a dozen times: “This is your home, Charlie. If you want a place to live, you are more than welcome, naturally, and your needs will always be provided for.” But a vote of confidence? A pat on the back and a free hand with a checkbook? Not on your life. Sometimes he thought Dad must have a cracked cylinder because he didn’t seem to understand that he could double a loan in six months in the deal with Farrar and he could pay it back to him with interest.

And what about that hassle a couple of years ago over a little thing like taking his son to Europe! It had been a wonderful idea. He and John would take a three-month trip, an
educational
trip; what could be better for an impressionable young man than to see the capitals of the continent with his father? Once he’d got John steamed up over the idea it would have been a cinch for Dad to finance it. He couldn’t deny the kid anything, apparently. But John just wouldn’t steam. Ungrateful little jerk. “I believe not,” he’d said. School was more important right now, trips could come later. Charlie’d spent an entire evening, wasting his breath, as it turned out, selling the idea to him. But all John had done was sit at his desk with a bunch of copybooks in front of him, obviously being polite, just waiting for him to finish. The copybooks were covered with math symbols and the very sight of them seemed to be irritating to Charlie. “What are you trying to do?” he had shouted at John. “Prove to someone that you’re an egghead? What is all this stuff, anyway? What’s it going to get you?” And John had replied with the greatest conceit, “I hope to be a physicist, Father.” Big deal!

You couldn’t laugh at a kid like that, of course, couldn’t tell him that most boys had high and mighty ideals, but he had, very kindly, pointed out a few facts of life to him. That he shouldn’t just stay cooped up in Nelson or, God forbid, Clarke Falls. That he owed it to himself to travel and find out what life was really all about, find out what kind of work he
really
wanted to do. And then John had said that Uncle Herb had promised him a job as a lab technician as soon as he finished high school. And what a great opportunity it was going to be as a preparation for college. Of course Charlie had to admit to himself that he’d gone too far when he said John had been reading too much science fiction trash. John kind of froze and said, “Excuse me, Father, but I do have a lot of studying to do,” at which Charlie swept the whole mess of papers off the desk and they went flying around the room. Apparently the kid had a temper because he yelled at him “Now will you get out of here!” And Charlie had said, “You haven’t an ounce of respect for me, have you, my son?” And John had said, “None—none at all!” Well, he would all right when he got his money back from good old Doc Payne. When he was a rich man again. Once more he cudgeled his brains, trying to figure why he had wasted all these years, these undignified, scrounging years, when all he’d have had to do was to say, “Well, Doc, you’ve had the use of my money for all this time, how’s about returning it now?” It had just been lying there, gathering interest probably, lovely moss-green interest.