"Can I come up?"
"For God's sakes, Paul, what time is it?"
"She's gone!"
"Okay, okay. Where--?"
"Downstairs!"
I found the light. Four-fifteen. Went to the door and propped it open
with a chair. Turned on the shower and stepped into it--letting the
multiple streams rattle against my sleepy skull and sweep away the
salty acids on my body.
The door slammed. Paul stuck his head around the curtain. "I can't find
her!"
"For God's sakes, it's not that hot! She won't melt! Go get yourself
some whisky. Or would you rather have coffee?"
"Christ. What do I care?" His brow was fissured. Sweat had soaked his
unshaved face--which he had wiped with hands increasingly grimed by
junketing about the city all night. He looked like a hung-over mechanic.
"You need a bath, yourself," I said, stepping out.
"You don't understand! I've got to find her! Before she does anything
desperate."
"Look, Paul. If she's going to pull one, on the spur--it's pulled. If
it's not done now--she won't hurry about it." I daubed myself with a
towel; perspiration came immediately where the water had just been. It
was muggier than Miami before a hurricane. "Don't get the idea that
because it's your first, it's her primary emotional crisis, either!
Marcia's been through a lot!" I opened the hot-water tap, let it
run, and filled a tumbler. I went into the living room, took a jar
of powdered coffee from the desk pigeonhole where I kept it, dumped
in a couple of spoonfuls, went back, and stirred with my toothbrush
handle. Then I took a couple of lumps of sugar from a horde I'd been
accumulating at the Astolat's expense, plunked them in, and stirred
more. I drank about half of the hot coffee and lit a cigarette.
Paul had followed every step of this gambit. I felt a little less like
a roused-up mummy with the coffee inside me, so I said, "I'm sorry as
all hell, cooky. Tell me about it."
"You did it!" His eyes despised me for a moment. Then tears came. "I
guess I should have known enough not to bring her around to see you."
"What did I do?"
"Made her self-conscious. Made her think it wasn't ever going to work
out for us. She said that when you looked at her it made her feel like
a tart."
It had gone the other way around: when she'd looked at me, she'd
felt--not like a tart, necessarily--but not like a faithful wife,
either. And I was being blamed for that. I skipped the point. "You two
kids retired in good order."
"That's what I thought. We got about a block away before she blew up."
"I'm sorry."
He tossed himself into a chair. He slipped down his tie and stared at
me. "What in hell _did_ you do?"
"Nothing."
"It wasn't--a pleasant--lunch. If all those idiotic things hadn't got
us laughing--then paralyzed--"
"Go on. She blew up?"
"Sure. She said about a thousand crazy things--things like never being
able to go around with me where people knew--because she realized she'd
always see them knowing--and thinking. I had to get back to the lab.
We've got the pile set at--we've got stuff cooking. I managed to calm
her down enough so she promised to go home and get dinner. But when I
got there--" He held out a note:
Paul, dear--For people like us, it should always be quick, clean,
permanent, and no hard feelings. I love you--that's why. M.
"Sounds like--going away. Nothing more drastic."
"Drastic enough! And she can't get away with that! I won't let her!
We'd have made it."
"What did you do? Bloodhound around the city?"
"Went to her old apartment, first. Then--to the people who'd been her
friends. Routing them out. Bribing doormen to let me knock and wake
them up. Finally--when I ran out of ideas--I went to Hattie Blaine's.
Good God--what a hideous place!"
I skipped that one, too. It was no time to argue that Hat's, while it
had a few dim facets of one sort or another, was in my opinion (or had
been, anyhow)--rather enchanting. A kindlier spot than many a hearth or
any city street.
"What did Hat say?"
"Ye gods! She talked. She talked the grimmest bunch of obscene
sophistries I ever heard in my life! She tried to get me drunk! She
even tried to get one of the girls to--entertain me!"
"It never passed through your cold, reasoning, scientific cranium that
perhaps she was trying to be decent to you?"
"_Decent!_"
"Did she know where Marcia was?"
"If she did--she wasn't saying. She said she had no idea on earth.
Hadn't heard from her for months. Or seen her--naturally. I begged
her--beseeched her--to give me any useful address. Any name. Any scrap
of a suggestion--"
I picked up the phone. After ringing me, the Astolat switchboard
operator had fallen back to sleep and I listened to the buzz for a long
while before she plugged in--irritably. The number I gave wasn't in the
book. But Hattie wouldn't be asleep--yet. Not unless she'd changed.
Viola answered and Hattie came on in a moment. "Hello, Phil. What's
cooking? You and Gwen quarrel?"
Since waking, I hadn't thought about Gwen--or Yvonne. The question
startled me. "Nope," I said. "Gwen, incidentally, has--has gone out
for a bit with a friend of mine. Nice gal, Gwen. It's about my nephew,
Paul."
"Oh. Is he there?"
"Yeah."
"Phil, that lad's in very bad shape."
"Yeah."
"I'm serious. I know men. He's apt to do--anything!"
"Yeah. Maybe so. Look. You don't have any ideas about Marcia--that
you'd give me, but not him?"
"Too many!"
"I don't understand."
"I couldn't very well give Paul the names and addresses of all the boys
who have liked her, could I? In the shape he's in--he'd rout out God
Almighty, or run a one-man posse through hell."
"Yeah."
"Phil. He shouldn't see her now--even if I knew where she was--and I
haven't a single good idea about that. Just--lots of possibilities. I
don't know what she'd do--I doubt if she'd do anything violent--but she
has a right to be wherever she wants, hasn't she?"
"Of course. I just thought--if you did have any hunches--he's sitting
here chewing the rug--"
Hattie sighed. "Old enough to do better! Maybe he's a great
physicist--but, believe me, he's in kindergarten on women! I tried
to tell him so--gently. But he just sat there looking wilder than a
priest trapped in the ladies' can! If I hear anything tomorrow, Phil,
I'll give you a ring. If I were you--I'd slip Paul a Mickey Finn, or
something, to cool him down."