“Yes. The next time I brought the matter up she talked as if she had a lawyer sitting in the room with us. She didn’t sound a bit like herself, and I ought to know. She told me to have an affair, or as many affairs as I liked, but not to expect her to give me cause to divorce her. She came right out with it. She said that money was no consideration, but then in the next breath she said that if she took half and I kept half, we’d both be that much poorer. Each of us would only be worth half of what there is now.”
“And she’s quite right. Mr. Hyme has a great deal of common sense, it seems to me. And it is Mr. Hyme, I’m sure. Wilma would never have figured that out all by herself. So to get back to Mr. Hyme, your problem is why does he want to preserve the status quo? My guess is that Mr. Hyme wants to have a good friend in New York society, possibly for the rest of his days. Sooner or later Wilma’s old friends will come to realize that it was Mr. Hyme who advised her to preserve her marriage. Therefore he is a very dependable man, not at all the gigolo type who could just as easily have persuaded Wilma to divorce you and marry him. Mr. Hyme is a dangerous man, the more so because he doesn’t seem to be a bit dangerous.”
“Yes,” said Pen.
“And where does that leave you and your mistress?”
“I haven’t had the courage to tell her the truth.”
“I more or less gathered that. But why has she been so patient? Have you asked yourself that?”
“No,” said Pen. “It never occurred to me.”
“You’re not giving her credit for very much intelligence. Haven’t you stopped to consider the matter from her point of view? She surely must know that you’re stalling her off. And this is the second time, if I’m not mistaken. You broke off with her once before, and then you went back. This time she must have thought you meant business.”
“Yes. I told her it might take a while,” said Pen.
“What is a while? A year? Two years? Two months? Actually how long has it been that you’ve been stalling her off?”
“Almost six months, I guess,” said Pen.
“Pen, if you insist on being so damned honorable about all this, you ought to give her up. Why are you afraid to?”
“Who said I’m afraid to?”
“I do,” said George. “Why don’t you fire her?”
“You know who it is,” said Pen.”
“Yes, and I’ve known for a long time. Do you want me to fire her?”
“Certainly not. I don’t want her to know that you know. If she has to leave the office, I’ll be the one to tell her.”
“And then what? She goes on being your mistress?”
“If she will be. But I want you to keep out of it. If you insist on her leaving the office, you can think up some excuse for firing her. But I’ll be the one to tell her, and you keep out of the whole thing.”
“Why don’t we have her in here right now and both tell her? The time has come for putting all our cards on the table.”
“If you do that, I’ll never speak to you again as long as I live. The only life I have is with her, having her near me in the office, and the times we can be alone. I can see why you want to get her out of the office. But I’m not going to have you do anything that will interfere with the other times I see her.”
“Pen, when you get fed up with her, you’re going to wish you’d let me handle this.”
“I’m not you,” said Pen. “We’re not a bit alike. I could never imagine going to all that trouble just to get away from my wife for a few days. Calling me long distance, making up some story about advertising, taking the sleeper. Christ Almighty, what a way to go through life!”
“Show me how your way is better.”
“No better, maybe, but it’s my way, not yours. You’ve never even seen your own grandchildren, that’s where your way has gotten you. You never will see them, either, till they’re old enough to be safe from you.”
“Is that what young Hibbard told you?”
“It doesn’t make any difference who told me. It’s true,” said Pen. “Your own son doesn’t want you anywhere near his kids. You have a hell of a lot to answer for, my friend.”
“To whom?”
“To God, maybe.”
“Oh, dear me. Did you get that information from Hibbard, too? Or is that something you thought up all by yourself? You and Mr. Hibbard must have a lot to say to each other.”
“Hibbard doesn’t have to be afraid of you.”
“Do you?”
“Not of you, but of what you might do to someone I love. But if you hurt her, George, you can start being afraid of me. I mean that.”
George tapped his fingertips together and looked out the window. ‘What your friend Mr. Hyme said about your marriage applies here as well. If you feel so strongly that I’m the arch-villain of the piece, then we ought to call in the lawyers. But as Mr. Hyme said, if you take your half and I take mine, we’d both be that much poorer. What do you want to do?”
“I’ll have to think it over,” said Pen.
“That’s right. Don’t do anything impulsive. I’m here on an impulse, and a half an hour ago I was sure it was a good one. However, we shall see. I’ve come all this way. You think it over. I’ll be in and out of here most of the day, and at the Carstairs tonight. Now if you’ll excuse me, I want to run over and see Charley Bohm. Oh, and are you planning to tell Miss Strademyer about this conversation? She offered to take some dictation, but that could be very awkward if you spill the beans.”
“I’ll spare her that,” said Pen.
“You’re such a good man, Pen. Such a good example to your older brother.”
“Go fuck yourself,” said Pen.
“Nope,” said George.
The unsuspected duplicity of young Preston Hibbard would have to be dealt with, but first there was Marian Strademyer, Marian Strademyer and that reluctance of hers to leave his office. He rang for her.
“I came to New York for one special reason,” said George.
“Oh, really? What was that?” she said.
“I’ll tell you later.”
“How much later?”
“Oh—say, six o’clock? At your apartment?”
She shook her head. “Can’t be done,” she said.
“Well, that’s too bad. My trip is wasted.”
“You could have phoned me yesterday,” she said.
“No, this was on the spur of the moment. You wouldn’t have been here.”
She paused. “I’ll see what I can do. You’ll be back here this afternoon?”
“Yes, after lunch.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” she said. He was tempted to say he knew what she could do, but it was a temptation he resisted. At least her part in the impulse he had followed remained sound. Indeed, as he quickly thought it over, his obedience to the impulse, though it encountered minor aggravation by Geraldine and possibly serious difficulty with Pen, continued to promise the relaxation he needed. A venture that went too smoothly was not stimulating. Even his displeasure over young Hibbard’s double-dealing made Hibbard more stimulating than he might have been as a conventional Boston eccentric. Boston was full of conventional eccentrics.
The lunch club where he was meeting Charley Bohni was a dull place in one of the older skyscrapers, and Charley Bohm was a dull man; but there had been enough excitement for one morning, and George was pleased that for the next hour and a half there would be no demands on his mental energy. “We are coming along fine,” said Charley, after they had ordered their lunch.
“Yes, I read all your letters, and I had a chat with Ringwall.”
“There’s a clever fellow, Ringwall. Clever enough to realize that this could mean a lot to him.”
“We must emphasize that,” said George.