Эд Макбейн - Running From Legs and Other Stories

“I’m afraid that wouldn’t be very honest on my part.”

“Oh, are you honest, Mr. Eisler?”

“I think I am.”

“Was the abortion honest?” Jennifer asked, and the waiter came with our second round.

“Here we go, sir,” he said. “Scotch on the rocks, vodka martini, straight up. I’m going to leave you now for just a few minutes to get some of those hot hors d’oeuvres from the serving tray. Would you like some hot hors d’oeuvres, miss?”

“Yes, that would be very nice, thank you.”

“I’ll be back in just a little bit,” the waiter said, and smiled, and hurried off.

I decided I had better lead the conversation where I wanted it to go, rather than entrusting it to Jennifer’s direction. I was no more interested in discussing her abortion than I was in discussing my own appendectomy — less so, in fact. And yet, as I asked her about the courses she was taking and listened to the answers she gave, another conversation threaded itself through my mind and through the discussion we were presently engaged in, my son Adam coming to us in the living room just as John and Louis Garrod were saying goodnight, my son’s blue eyes searching my face, scrub beard growing in patchily, long hair trailing like a Sienese page’s, “Dad, I’d like to talk to you a minute, please.”

And Abby jokingly saying to him, “Adam, if you’re going to tell us that Jennifer’s pregnant, please let it wait till morning, this has been a busy day,” and John and Louise laughing.

And Adam smiling with his mouth but not his eyes and then asking me again, gently but insistently, if I would please come to his room because there was something important he wanted to discuss with me.

In his room (and all of this rushed through my mind as Jennifer opposite me now sipped at her scotch and started telling me about a really great professor at the school), Adam sat on the edge of his bed and said, flat out, “Dad, Jennifer’s two weeks late, and we think she’s pregnant.” And I remember thinking how wonderful it was that my son could talk so honestly to his father, what was all this crap about a generation gap? And I remember telling him there was no need to worry yet, why when I was his age I had sweated out a dozen similar scares, and he told me, “Dad, Jennifer’s never been late before.” And I remember assuring him that perhaps her own anxiety was causing the delay, thinking all the while how proud I was of this marvelous open discussion I was having with my son, and convinced in my own mind of course that Jennifer was not pregnant, Jennifer could not be pregnant.

But Jennifer was.

“... near the school,” she said now. “Are you familiar with San Francisco?”

“Not really.”

“Then the address wouldn’t mean anything to you.”

“No, it wouldn’t. Do you live alone?”

“I’ve got two roommates.”

“Berkeley girls?”

“Marcie’s at Berkeley, yes. Paul’s in the construction business.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Disapprove of that, too, huh?”

“Why should I?”

“You shouldn’t, actually. Marcie and Paul have been making it together for almost a year and a half now. There’s nothing wrong with them living together.”

“I didn’t say there was.”

“I mean, I do have my own room and everything, you know. We’re not like having a mass orgy up there, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I’m not thinking anything of the sort,” I said, and picked up my drink. Jennifer was studying me, and I was uncomfortably aware of her gaze.

“It’s just what you’re thinking,” she said. “Well, you happen to be wrong. Paul’s like a brother to me. I mean, we all walk around the apartment in our underwear, for God’s sake. It’s not what you think.” She paused, searching for a clincher. “Paul even urinates with the bathroom door open,” she said.

“I see,” I said.

“It isn’t what you think at all.”

“Apparently not.”

Jennifer suddenly began laughing.

“What?” I said.

“I just thought of something very funny.”

“What is it?”

“Well, Marcie got a call from home just before the Spring break, you know? From her mother, you know? Who wanted to know what her plans were, and all that. I took the call, you see, and I knew that Marcie and Paul were in the bedroom, you know, doing it, you know. So I carried the phone in — we’ve got this real long extension cord — and there’s Paul on top of her, and I handed the phone to Marcie, and I said, ‘It’s for you, dear. It’s your mother.’ ” Jennifer burst out laughing again. “What a great girl! Do you know what she did? She took the phone, Paul still on top of her and not missing a beat, and she went into this long conversation with her mother about plane connections and reservations and some new clothes she’d bought — oh God, it was hilarious!”

“Yes, it does sound very comical.”

“You disapprove, right?”

“I’m not your father,” I said. “I wish you’d stop asking me whether I approve or disapprove.”

“I sometimes used to think of you as my father,” Jennifer said. “When Adam and I were still in high school, and I used to come over all the time. My own father’s a son of a bitch, you know. Getting him to say two straight words in a row is like expecting the Sphinx to do a eulogy on Moishe Dayan. Well, you remember how he was when we learned I was pregnant.”

“I thought he handled it pretty well,” I said, and then quickly changed the subject again. “You said Paul was in the construction business. What does he do?”

“He’s an electrician. He’s not a kid, you understand.”

“No, I didn’t understand that.”

“Oh, God, he’s almost as old as you are. How old are you?”

“Forty-one.”

“Well, no, he’s not quite that old.”

“Nobody’s quite that old,” I said.

“Well, you are,” Jennifer said, and drained her glass. “Do you think we can have another one of these? Paul’s only thirty-nine, I guess. Or forty. I’m not sure. I’ll have to ask him when I get home.”

“Home?”

“San Francisco. The apartment.”

“I see.”

“That’s home,” Jennifer said simply, and I signaled for the waiter. He hurried over with the hors d’oeuvres he had promised, looking harried and apologetic.

“Sorry to have taken so long with these, sir,” he said, “but I had some calls for drinks and I...”

“That’s quite all right,” I said. “We’d like another round, too, when you get a chance.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, “right away. In the meantime, we’ve got these nice little cocktail franks, and these little hot cheese patties, and some of these things wrapped in bacon here, I don’t know what you call them. Enjoy yourselves, folks.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I’ll get those drinks for you,” he said, and rushed off.

Jennifer picked up one of the tiny frankfurters and popped it into her mouth. “Mmmm,” she said, “delicious. I’m starved to death, I may eat the whole damn platter.”

“Maybe we ought to leave here and get some dinner,” I said.

“What?”

“I said maybe we can have dinner together.”

Jennifer nodded. She nodded and looked into her empty glass. Then she turned to me, and stared directly into my eyes, and said, “What you really mean, Mr. Eisler, is maybe we can go to bed together. Isn’t that what you really mean?”

I stared back at her. She was a beautiful young girl in a strange town, and my wife was seven hundred air miles away on a fire escape with the head of creation. Moreover, my own son had been making love to her regularly when they were both still in high school, she’d been pregnant at least once to my knowledge, she had undergone an abortion for which I had paid a thousand dollars, and she was now running around in her bra and panties in an apartment with a forty-year-old man who urinated with the door open. I did not honestly know whether I wanted to take her to dinner or take her to bed.