I spent that night on the second act, and was just getting it pretty well in my head when I heard Doris come in and then go down again. And what does she do but begin singing Traviata down there, right in that part I had just been going over. Get how it was: she downstairs, singing the stuff, and me upstairs, in bed, holding the book on her. Well, it was murder. In the first place, she had no rhythm. I guess that was what had bothered me before, when I knew something was wrong, and didn’t know what it was. To her, the music was just a string of phrases, and that was all. When she’d get through with one, she’d just go right on to the next one, without even a stop. I tried to hum my part, under my breath, in the big duet, and it couldn’t be done. Her measures wouldn’t beat. I mean, I’d still have two notes to sing, to fill out the measure on my part, and she’d already be on to the next measure on her part. I did nothing but stop and start, trying to keep up. And then, even within the phrase, she didn’t get the notes right. If she had a string of eighth notes, she’d sing them dotted eighths and sixteenths, so it set your teeth on edge. And every time she came to a high note, she’d hold it whether there was a hold marked over it or not, and regardless of what the other voice was supposed to be doing. I lay there and listened to it, and got sorer by the minute. By that time I had a pretty fair idea of how good you’ve got to be in music before you’re any good at all, and who gave her the right to high-hat me on her fine artistic soul, and then sing like that? Who said she had an artistic soul, the way she butchered a score? But right then I burst out laughing. That was it. She didn’t have any artistic soul. All she had was a thirst for triumphs. And I, the sap, had fallen for it.
I heard her come in the bedroom, and hid the score under my pillow. She came in after a while, and she was stark naked, except for a scarf around her neck with a spray of orchids pinned to it. I knew then that something was coming. She walked around and then went over and stood looking out the window. “You better watch yourself. Catching cold is no good for the voice.”
“It’s so hot. I can’t bear anything on.”
“Don’t stand too close to that window.”
“... Remind me to call up Hugo for my Traviata score. I wanted it just now, and couldn’t find it. He must have taken it.”
“Wasn’t that Traviata you were singing?”
“Oh, I know it, so far as that goes. But I hate to lose things... I was running over a little of it for Jack Leighton. He thinks he can get me on at the Cathedral. You know he owns some stock.”
Jack Leighton was the guy she had gone to the theatre with, and one of her string. I had found out who they all were by watching Lorentz at her parties. He knew her a lot better than I did, Cecil was right about that, and it gave me some kind of a reverse-English kick to check up on her by watching his face while she’d be off in a corner making a date with some guy. Lorentz squirmed, believe me he did. I wasn’t the only one.
“That would be swell.”
“Of course, it’s only a picture house, but it would be a week’s work, and they don’t pay badly. It would be something coming in. And it wouldn’t be bad showmanship for them. After all — I am prominent.”
“Socialite turns pro, hey?”
“Something like that. Except that by now I hope I can consider myself already a pro.”
“That was Jack you went out with?”
“Yes... Was it all right to wear his orchids?”
“Sure. Why not?”
She went over and sat down. I was pretty sure the orchids were my cue to get sore, but I didn’t. Another night I would have, but Traviata had done something to me. I knew now I was as good as she was, and even better, in the place where she had always high-hatted me, and knew that no matter what she said about the orchids, she couldn’t get my goat. I even acted interested in them, the wrong way: “How many did he send?”
“Six. Isn’t it a crime?”
“Oh well. He can afford them.”
Her foot began to kick. I wasn’t marching up to slaughter the way I always marched. She didn’t say anything for a minute, and then she did something she never did in a fight with me, because I always saved her the trouble and did it first. I mean, she lost her temper. The regular way was for me to get sore, and the sorer I got, the more angelic, and sad, and persecuted she got. But this time it was different, and I could hear it in her voice when she spoke. “—Even if we can’t.”
“Why sure we can.”
“Oh no we can’t. No more, I’m sorry to say.”
“If orchids are what it takes to make you happy, we can afford all you want to wear.”
“How can we afford orchids, when I’ve pared our budget to the bone, and—”
“We got a budget?”
“Of course we have.”
“First I heard of it.”
“There are a lot of things you haven’t heard of. I scrimp, and save, and worry, and still I’m so frightened I can hardly sleep at night. I only hope and pray that Jack Leighton can do something for me — even if he’s like every other man, and wants his price.”
“What price?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Well, what the hell. He’s human.”
“Leonard! You can say that?”
“Sure.”
“Suppose he demanded his price — and I paid it?”
“He won’t.”
“Why not, pray?”
“Because I outweigh him by forty pounds, and can beat hell out of him, and he knows it.”
“You can lie there, and look at me, wearing another man’s orchids, almost on my knees to him to give me work that we so badly need — you can actually take it that casually—”
She raved on, and her voice went to a kind of shrieking wail, and I did some fast thinking. When I said what I did about outweighing Jack, it popped into my mind that there was something funny about those orchids, and that it was a funny thing for him to do, send six orchids to Doris, even if I didn’t outweigh him.
“And you won’t.”
“Don’t be so sure. I’m getting desperate, and—”
“In the first place, you never paid any man his price, because you’re not that much on the up-and-up with them. In the second place, if you want to pay it, you just go right ahead and pay. I won’t pretend I’ll like it, but I’m not going down on my knees to you about it. And in the third place, they’re not his orchids.”
“They’re — what makes you say that?”
“I just happen to remember. When Jack called me up a while ago—”
“He—?”
“Oh yeah, he called me up. During the intermission. To tell me, in case I missed my cigarette case, that he had dropped it in his pocket by mistake.”
It wasn’t true. Jack hadn’t called me up. But I knew Doris never went out during an intermission, and that Jack can’t live a half hour without a smoke, so I took a chance. I could feel things breaking my way, and I meant to make the most of it.
“—And just as he hung up, he made a gag about the swell flowers I buy my wife. I had completely forgotten it until just this second.”
“Leonard, how can you be so—”
“So you went out and ordered the orchids yourself, didn’t you? And rubbed them in his face all night, just to make him feel like a bum. And now you come home and tell me he sent them, just to make me feel like a bum... And it turns out we can afford them, doesn’t it?”