“Moses?”
Drifting awake, he was claimed by a fuzzy raven-haired figure, sweetly perfumed, throbbing in and out of focus. Her smile, tainted with benevolence, irritated him.
“Beatrice?”
“Yes. Are you pleased?”
The raven-haired figure, possibly Beatrice, subsided softly into a chair, silk rustling.
“Don’t let me fall asleep again.”
“I won’t.”
“Say your name.”
“Beatrice.”
“Imagine. Beatrice.”
He squinted, concentrating, grudgingly reducing the multiple breasts, each one exquisite, to two; the comically trebled mouth to a more satisfying sensual one.
Unable to cope with his idiotic gaze, she asked, “How do I look?”
“Harder.”
“Count on Moses.”
“You asked.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think I can make it back to the bar again,” he said, pointing at his empty glass with a certain cunning. “You go, please.”
Enabling him to watch Beatrice, his heart’s desire, stride to the bar, obviously nourished by the stir her presence was creating among the men in shiny suits gathered there. She took too long. Head slumping, he drifted off to sleep again.
“Moses.”
“Go away.” Then he recognized Beatrice, the proffered drink, and he smiled again. “I want to ask you a question of the most intimate nature.”
“Please don’t start on me, Moses.”
“Do you wear pantyhose now?”
She shook her head, no, flushed but amused.
“Garters still. I knew it. Ah, Beatrice.” Satiated, he slid into sleep again, his smile serene.
“Moses?”
“What?”
“You said you didn’t want to snooze.”
Slowly, deliberately, he relit his dead cigar, enormously pleased with his accomplishment.
“Strawberry says you’re heading North of Sixty.”
“Tomorrow afternoon. Could I see a garter?”
“Oh, Moses, please.”
“Just one little peekee.”
“Where are you staying in town?”
“Why, Mrs. Clarkson, whatever are you thinking?”
“Stop playing the fool.”
“I rent an apartment here now.”
“I’ll drive you there and we can talk. It’s too depressing here.”
“It’s my club.”
“You belonged to better clubs once.”
“And a better woman.”
“Let’s go.”
“Only if I can have a peekee first.”
“Not here. There. Let’s go.”
He gave her his address before staggering out with her, toppling into her Porsche, and falling asleep again. But they had only gone a few blocks when he started to tremble. “Stop the car!”
Alarmed, she braked. Moses, fumbling with the door handle, tumbled out, lurching blindly into the middle of Sherbrooke Street.
“Moses!”
Circling, he scrambled to the curb, sinking to his knees beside a fire hydrant, his stomach heaving. Beatrice pulled up alongside and waited in the car for him to finish. She was wearing a new dress. A Givenchy. “Do you feel better now?”
“Worser.”
While Moses showered, she made coffee and then wandered restlessly about the apartment. Bay windows. Old-fashioned bulky radiators. The Persian carpet, worn threadbare in the middle, reminded her so vividly of home that she found herself searching for the walnut RCA radio cabinet and the sticky Peer’s Cream Soda bottle supporting the window with the broken sash. Then, clearing the dining-room table of old newspapers, she caught her first glimpse of the crocheted tablecloth. She slipped on her horn-rimmed glasses to have a better look just as Moses emerged from the bathroom in a towel dressing gown.
“Where did you get this?” she asked, stroking the tablecloth.
“My mother made it years ago.”
“How come you never brought it out when we were together?”
“I was saving it for your vintage years,” he said, accepting a black coffee and adding a couple of fingers of cognac to it. Then he bit off the tip of a Monte Cristo and lit it. “To think that I had once been so foolish to believe that you would be the one, as the old human question mark put it, who could ‘help me through this long disease, my life.’”
It was, she knew, his way of putting her down. She was supposed to recognize the quote. “You think I’m stupid,” she said.
“Of course you’re stupid, but it hardly matters in the circles you frequent now that you are so insufferably rich.”
“I didn’t marry him only for that.”
“I want my peekee now.”
“Go to hell.”
“Just the quickest of peeks, a mere flash, what would it cost you?”
“Why are you determined to make me feel cheap?”
“Aren’t you?”
“I loved you, Moses, but I couldn’t stand it any more. You have no idea of how insufferable you are when you’re drunk. I want my peekee. Just one little peekee. Fuck you.”
“At least I haven’t changed.”
“I’ll give you that much.”
“Actually, I would have left me a lot earlier than you did. I am impossible.”
“Are you going north to visit Henry?”
“I have a hunch the ravens are gathering. Damn it, Beatrice, why did you flush me out? What do you want with me now?”
“I needed somebody to talk to. Somebody I could trust.”
“Well that somebody isn’t me. Not any more.”
“Tom goes both ways. He has a boy. I’m not supposed to know but they’re in Antibes together now.”
“Then you’ll get an even richer divorce settlement than you were counting on when you decide it’s time to trade up again.”
“Take me north with you.
“Certainly not.”
“Can I stay the night?”
“Yes. No. Let me think.”
“Bastard.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because fool that I am,” he said, sinking into an armchair, “I sometimes rush to the door of my cabin, thinking I’ve heard a car and that it will be you.” He knocked over his coffee cup, half full of cognac. “Get out, Beatrice. Leave me alone,” he pleaded, before his head slumped forward and he began to snore.
Beatrice went into the kitchen and washed the dishes and then it came to her. She dug a pen and paper out of her purse and wrote, “The human question mark was Alexander Pope. You are as smug and pompous and hateful as ever.” She left the note on the dining-room table. Then she stood before him, hiked her dress, revealing her garters, and fled the apartment, weeping. Outside, she stopped, cursed, and retraced her steps, determined to retrieve the note. But his apartment door was locked.
Nine
Isaac, who had once tagged everywhere after his father, clutching the hem of his parka, now avoided him. Shirking his Talmud studies, pleading a headache. Declining to join him in saying grace after meals. Giving up on his Hebrew lessons. “Who speaks it here? Only you.”
Nialie anticipated that he could hurt Henry badly, but Henry claimed not to be distressed. “It’s a stage they all go through,” he said. “You are not to worry.”
Only twelve years old, Isaac’s face was already encrusted with angry red pimples. He bit his nails. His voice was cracking. Once inseparable from his schoolmates, always up to mischief, he now eschewed their company as well.
“What happened to all your friends?” Nialie asked him.
A shrug.
“I asked you a question.”
“So?”
“Answer me.”
“They’re always asking me for money.”
“Why?”
“That’s what you’ve got, they say, isn’t it?”