“Thanks. Goodbye, Mike.”
“Goodbye.”
Jake walked down the drive, drawing his overcoat tight around him against the cold hard wind that was blowing. The cab driver turned into the driveway and Jake climbed in and lit a cigarette while the driver backed up to turn around.
They were ready to pull out when a shout from the house made the driver stop. Jake looked out and saw Yeabo running toward them with a gallon jug of pale brown liquid in each hand.
Jake opened his door and said, “What the hell is that?” as Yeabo came up beside the car.
“Cider,” Yeabo panted. “We make it right here. The boss wants you to have it.”
“Tell him it’s just what I wanted,” Jake said.
Driving back to the city, the driver glanced over his shoulder and said, “That’s a real friendly gesture, I’d say. I mean it’s kind of old-fashioned to give guests something like that to take with them.”
“My friend is of the old school,” Jake said. “But I’m not. Would you like it — the cider, I mean?”
The cab driver said that would be fine, and Jake said okay, and told him to drive to the Palmer House.
He sat back wondering what was on Denise Riordan’s mind.
Jake went up the steps leading to the lobby of the Palmer House and after a quick glance around saw her sitting in a chair beside a tall palm and idly turning the pages of a fashion magazine. She was wearing a black faille dress with broad amber earrings and choker, and her eyes were very bright against her tanned skin.
“Why, hello,” she said, standing. “You’re punctual.”
“Men my age have to cultivate minor virtues to compensate for our lack of major vices,” Jake said, and realized that he sounded roguish.
He suggested a drink and they went upstairs to a private room on the mezzanine where some thirty or forty young men and women were standing about and drinking liquor provided by radio station WXL.
Jake got two drinks from the bar and led Denise to a green satin sofa. She sat down rather cautiously and he realized that she had been drinking. Her movements were somewhat too deliberate.
WXL’s press agent, an energetic and beaming young man named Miller stopped by and wrung Jake’s hand and asked if everything were all right. He nodded to Denise and then with a quick smile and a glance at her long slender legs, excused himself and joined another group.
“Is he the host?” Denise asked.
“I suppose you could call him that.” He held a match to her cigarette and said, “Now what burning motive prompted you to call me?”
Denise smiled. “You’ll think I’m foolish. But I liked you. And my life gets very dull at times. So I thought I’d get to know you better. It’s as simple as that.”
“That’s very flattering. But I can’t believe your life is dull.”
Denise sipped her drink and patted his arm. The gesture was oddly intimate, and Jake had the ridiculous feeling that he was going to start edging away from her any minute.
“Danny is busy most of the time, you know,” she said, smiling. “He’s an old-fashioned husband. He thinks a woman is part of the equipment in a well-run home.”
“Let me fix your drink,” Jake interrupted, just to be saying something uncompromising, and left her long enough to get two fresh drinks.
She was glancing at the other people at the party with interest when he returned, and had apparently forgotten her husband and Jake as conversational gambits.
She said, “Where in the name of God do all these brilliant young bastards come from and what are they doing here?”
“Well, this is a business cocktail party and these young people work for advertising agencies. The station hopes to obligate them to the extent of a few highballs, so that when their agencies buy time they will remember WXL fondly.”
“Does it work out that way?”
“Sometimes, I suppose. But mostly not.” He glanced up at the crowd. “I don’t see anyone here who could make a decision on anything more important than taking an extra comma from a piece of copy.”
“They sound very smart,” Denise said with a dubious nod of her head.
They did indeed, Jake reflected. The air was thick with the inside of “inside” stories, and the scraps of conversation that fell around him sparkled with epigrammatic criticisms of all art forms, of all entertainment, of damn near everything. Two young men directly in front of them were arguing heatedly about an article from the Partisan Review, a piece, Jake gathered, which advanced the theory that all homes flourished for the purpose of gratifying the father’s and mother’s need for an incestuous relationship within a socially approved framework; behind them a scoop of Drew Pearson’s was belittled as having told only half the story, and the unpublished half was being recounted scornfully by a man who wrote jingles for Curvex Foundation Garments; a group of three young girls and two middle-aged men were giggling over the things one of the men was saying about prominent writers; he had said that Truman Capote was a nasty little boy scribbling four-syllable words on the sidewalk, and that Hemingway’s self-conscious virility stemmed from his having been drummed from the Boy Scouts as a youth, and that William Saroyan was really Norman Corwin with a coating of glucose; and in the corner a young man with lank dark hair was telling a captivated girl that the war had shot his integration right to hell. “I crystallized between satyrism and impotence,” he added angrily.
“Can I have a drink?” Denise said. “These people are terrific. I feel like the real bourgeois.”
“It’s just talk,” Jake said. “Really, it’s a trick.”
He brought her a drink which she finished quickly. They talked casually for a few moments, and then she said, “Aren’t you bored with me?”
“Why, no. Not at all.”
“Spoken like a gentleman.” She was quite tight, Jake saw. Her bright blue eyes focused on his intently. “You’re thinking I’m just the drunk and aging wife of a client, aren’t you? Somebody you’d damn well better be nice to.”
“No, I wasn’t thinking anything of the sort,” Jake said.
“Well, what are you thinking? You’re not thinking of me by any remote chance, are you?”
“Yes, I was thinking of you,” Jake said, and smiled. He wanted now to get her home. “I was thinking a drive might be pleasant.”
“God, that’s a feverish thought,” Denise laughed. “You’ve got to be more controlled, Mr. Harrison. Keep that wild Latin temperament of yours in check.”
“I’m not called the North American continent for nothing,” Jake said, hoping the gag, old and undistinguished though it was, might get her in a better humor.
“Oh, yah, yah, yah,” Denise said. “You think I’m a bore. Just a dumb babe on the make. Well, I know something that might surprise you. Danny thinks you’re doing a lousy job for him.”
“Well, he’s right,” Jake said. “But it’s a tough account.”
“Also I know something about your great and glorious May Laval.” She bowed her head in mock solemnity. “Everyone has to do that when they mention her name, you know. She was so damn witty and clever and wonderful and now she’s so damn dead. Isn’t that a laugh?”
“I suppose it has an element of humor in it,” Jake said.
“Oh, don’t bother making me feel ashamed. You’re wasting your time.”
“But what do you know about her?” Jake said.
“I know that Danny Boy sent Avery Meed to her apartment to get her diary. Now, isn’t that delightful news?”
Jake felt let down. That much Riordan had already admitted. But he was curious as to how Denise knew as much as she did, and hopeful that she might know more. So he said, “You’re doing fine, but you’ll have to do better than that to shock me.”
Denise said, “I don’t know anything else.” She sipped the last of her drink. “You see, Danny Boy does a lot of business from home by phone, so I listen in on the extension by my bed. That’s the only way I can find out anything, and it’s better than listening to a radio.”