The two women chatted awhile. Mostly, Maddie chatted, rapidly and loudly, and Zoe listened, smiling and nodding at the phone.
It seemed to her she had been listening to Madeline Kurnitz all her life. Or at least since she had shared a room with her and two other girls at the University of Minnesota. That had been in 1960-1963, and even then Maddie had been gabbling a blue streak.
"A four-year vacation from the realities of life," was her judgment on the value of a college education, and her scholastic career reflected this belief. It was one long party studded with dates, escapades, affairs, unexplained absences, threats of expulsion, and an endless parade of yearning boys and older men that awed her roommates.
Maddie: "Listen, the only reason we're all here is to snare a husband. Right? So why don't they teach us something useful- like moaning. The only reason I got all these guys calling is that I've learned how to moan realistically while screwing. That's all a woman has to know to be a success: how to moan. This place should have a course called Moaning 101-102. Then the second year's course could be called Remedial Moaning."
Maddie: "Look, there are men, and there are husbands. If you were male, would you want to be a husband? The hell you would. You'd want to charge through life banging everything in sight. Men fuck, husbands have sex. Men smell, husbands use fou-fou. Men drink whiskey, husbands drink beer. Men are hung, husbands have hernias. Shit, I don't want a husband, I want a man."
The three roommates, from small towns in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa, listened to these pronouncements with nervous giggles. It wasn't the way they had been brought up. Maddie, from New York City, was a foreigner.
They worshiped her, because she was smart, funny, generous. And she passed along the men she didn't want or had tired of. In return, they loaned her lecture notes, coached her, covered up her absences, and finally got her through the four years to a BA degree.
She didn't show up for graduation, having taken off for Bermuda with a Yalie. But her diploma was mailed to her.
When Zoe Kohler came to New York from Winona, Minnesota, after her divorce, her first phone call was to Maddie. She was now Madeline Kurnitz with her own number in the directory. Harold Kurnitz was her fourth husband, and Maddie took Zoe under her wing as an experienced combat soldier might comfort, advise, and share his know-how with a raw recruit.
Maddie: "A divorce is like falling off a horse. You've got to get right back up and ride again or you'll be spooked for life."
"I don't think I want to marry again," Zoe said timidly.
Maddie: "Bullshit."
She had done her best-cocktail parties, dinner, blind dates- but finally she realized Zoe Kohler had been telling the truth: she didn't want to marry again, not at that point in her life.
Maddie (wrathfully): "That doesn't mean you can't screw, for God's sake. No wonder you have cramps. If I go two days without a bang, I sneeze and dust comes out my ears."
Now, listening to Maddie natter on about all the beautiful people who would be at her cocktail party ("A zillion horny studs!"), Zoe Kohler caught some of her excitement and said she'd come over from work, just for a few minutes, but she had to get home early.
Maddie: "That's what they all say, kiddo. But they come and they stay and they drink up all our booze. There's a guy I want you to meet…"
"Oh no," Zoe said. "Not again."
"Just meet him," Maddie urged. "That's all. Just shake his paw and say, 'How ja do.' Is that so awful?"
"No," Zoe said faintly, "I guess not."
Maddie finally got off the phone and Zoe went back to typing the Security Section roster for the following week. She guessed that she had been invited to the cocktail party at the last minute because Maddie had realized that she would have a preponderance of male guests and not enough women. So she was calling friends and acquaintances frantically, trying to redress the balance.
Zoe wasn't offended. That was the way she received the few invitations that came her way. At the last minute. To even up a dining table or take the place of a reneging guest. She was never first choice.
The empty afternoon wasted away. She distributed copies of the Security Section's employment schedule. She typed up four letters to departed guests who had left personal property in their rooms, and took the letters to Everett Pinckney for his signature. She delivered petty cash vouchers to the bookkeeping department.
She spoke briefly and coolly to the other Hotel Granger employees she dealt with, and they replied in kind. She had rebuffed their attempts at friendship, or even light-hearted companionship. She preferred to do her job swaddled in silence.
Back in her office, she spent the last hour at her desk, idly leafing through the current issue of a weekly trade magazine devoted to the hotel business in New York City. It contained articles on current occupancy rates, conventions scheduled for the coming months, predictions on the summer tourism season.
The most interesting section, to Zoe, was that dealing with hotel security matters. Frequently the names and addresses (undoubtedly fictitious) and physical descriptions of deadbeats were given. Numbers of stolen credit cards were listed. Crimes committed in hotels, especially swindles and cons, were detailed.
A regular column titled "WANTED" gave names, aliases, and descriptions of known criminals-robbers, burglars, prostitutes, pimps, professional gamblers, etc.-working New York hotels. In addition, unsolved hotel crimes were listed, with the name and phone number of the New York Police Department officer investigating the crime.
The last item in the column read:
"Homicide at the Grand Park on February 15th. Victim of stabbing: George T. Puller, 54, white male, of Denver, Colo. Anyone with information relating to this crime please contact Detective Sergeant Abner Boone, KL-5-8604."
That notice had been in the magazine for the past three weeks. Zoe Kohler wondered if Detective Sergeant Abner Boone was still seated by the phone, waiting…
Madeline and Harold Kurnitz lived in a high-rise on East 49th Street. The apartment house was just like Maddie: loud, brash, glittering. Five people crowded into the self-service elevator behind Zoe Kohler. She huddled back in a corner, watching them. They were laughing, their hands on each other. Zoe guessed they were going to the party. They were.
The door of the seven-room duplex was open. Sound surged out into the hall. In the foyer a uniformed maid took hats and coats, hung them away on a temporary rack, and handed out numbered checks. That was the way Maddie did things.
The party was catered, with two bartenders working behind counters and liveried waiters passing trays of hors d'oeuvres and California champagne. Maddie was lost in the throng, but her husband stood near the doorway to greet guests.
He was a big, hairy man, tufts sprouting from his ears. Zoe knew he was in yarn, fabrics, linings-something like that. "The rag business," Maddie called it. He had a slow, dry manner, ironic, amused and amazed that he found himself married to a jangling, outgoing, capricious woman.
Zoe liked him, and kissed his cheek. He seemed very solid to her, very protective, as he steered her to the nearest bar and ordered a glass of white wine for her.
"You remembered, Harry," she said.
"Of course I remembered," he said, smiling. "Of all Maddie's friends, I like you the best. I wish you'd see more of her. Maybe you can calm her down."
"No one can calm Maddie down."
"That's true," he said happily. "She's something, isn't she? Isn't she something?"
He moved away to greet more guests. Zoe put her back against the bar, looked around. A typical Maddie stand-up party: crushed, smoky. A hi-fi was blasting from somewhere. People were shrieking. She smiled, smiled, smiled. No one spoke to her.
She had never seen so many beautiful men. Some were elegant in three-piece Italian suits, gold a glitter at cuffs and wrists. Some were raffish, with embroidered Greek shirts opened low, medallions swinging against furred chests. Some, many, she supposed, were homosexuals. It didn't matter; they were all beautiful.