James Cain - The Magician's Wife

“So, I could be in love with her maybe.”

“The one who could be is. ”

They talked a bit longer, repeating what had been said, but in a more matter-of-fact way, he helping her regain her aplomb, the crisp elegance she had had when she came, and then he took her down, as he thought, to her car. But on finding that she had come on foot, that she had walked from Rosemary Park, where she lived, he insisted on taking her home. So she hooked a hand on his arm and they strolled through the balmy spring night and, in snatches, talked. It was mostly about flowers, and she stopped occasionally to point out the splashes of color the azaleas made on the lawns or to stare at the leaves overhead, now half open, “so feathery, so delicate, so unreal — so like the Midsummer Night’s Dream overture, those butterflies in the strings.” She went on: “That play is not about summer — it’s about spring, when everything’s moist and fresh instead of all dried up, when the flowers are still singing and the locusts haven’t started. But, of course, Midspring Night’s Dream is not a title — even Shakespeare, no doubt, had to think of that .” He agreed, glad he knew his Mendelssohn, and drew her attention to the splotches of white the dogwood blossoms made, “as though calcimined on.” She said: “Yes, the original Chinese white.” His hand was on hers as they reached her apartment house, another place like his own, if smaller. She stood peering in at the door, then whispered: “It is a beautiful night, and not the end of the story. I won’t have it that way! You’re not through with Sally — we have more talking to do! Would you like to come up for a while?”

“I’d love it.”

She took him inside the automatic elevator, then brought him into her apartment, excusing herself after turning on the lights. He wandered about, eying the modernist furniture, the oyster-shell rug, the crimson drapes, the French things on the walls, prints, posters, sketches, and paintings. He scanned the signatures closely, but didn’t see one that he knew. She came back with a highball tray, looking slenderer without her hat, gloves, and stole, and younger with her hair fluffed out on her neck. He spoke for Scotch on the rocks, and she filled a glass with ice, then let the whisky cover it. Making a light one for herself, she took a seat on the rectangular sofa, motioned him beside her. They sipped, recalling the dogwood again; then, recalling the overture, he hummed the violin part. She led him back once more to the “proposal” he’d made to Sally, and he told it in more detail, especially her answer to it, with due emphasis on the Wild Man from Borneo and nuttiness. He admitted he had been “rocked,” and solemnly proclaimed how simple it all would have been if “she’d just done nothing at all — stayed there, tucked away with me, and let me handle the rest.”

“If ‘she’ had?”

“Well, who are we talking about?”

“Do you realize you almost never say her name?”

“O.K., I was hard hit.”

“And still are?”

“Grace, I’ve told you I’m through.”

She thought some moments, then said: “Clay, I’d like to work on you, try to sell you on Sally, that you make another attempt, to get her to do what you want — what we both want. So why don’t I paint your portrait? After all, you are a thing of beauty, and you could come here at night, pose in my atelier, the little sun porch that I have, and while I work I’ll talk. You’ll be my captive audience — and who knows? I might make a sale.”

“You could — one that you don’t expect.”

“... What do you mean, Clay?”

“You’re a thing of beauty too, don’t forget.”

“Clay, she has dibs on you.”

“Dibs is dibs, of course. But—!”

“Stop talking like that, Clay.”

“Where is this atelier, Grace?”

So they began doing his portrait while he half reclined on the window seat in the sun porch off her living room, and she worked with pencils first, doing endless sketches of him, “to get what’s in your face — your eyes can be so fishy, except at certain times, and those times are what I want”; then she began working in color, with shiny tubes on a table and brushes laid beside them. At that stage she pushed out an easel, an upright post to which she clamped her board, already framed in raw oak, “so I can see what I’m doing.” She had him wear a blue shirt, “to go with your eyes and bring them up,” and a garnet jacket she had him buy, with brass buttons “to go with your hair.” As she worked she talked, often about the child: “Don’t forget, Elly’s my grandson, Clay — something I can’t get used to, but it’s true just the same. And if I tell the truth, he concerns me most of all, and he’s what it’s really about, this campaign I’m pushing with you. Because he could really be blighted in case of some mess — or whatever it might be — that Sally got herself into.”

But mostly she talked about Sally, her birth, her childhood, her venture into magic, her marriage, and what had come of it. She was helped by little promptings, queries of various kinds, from him, and before very long had told perhaps more than she meant to. So at the end of two or three weeks, with the portrait nearly done, he got up one night, for a stretch, from the window seat where she posed him and suddenly started to talk. “So,” he said briskly, “as I get it, this sweet innocent child, barely turned seventeen, got herself sawed in half, but took no interest at all till she found out who he was, this guy in the sorcerer clothes — the son of the Gorsuch millions. Then she went into action, took a job in the act, married him, and at once gave him a son, who was also, we note, an heir. Then she started in making his life a hell on earth in the hope of getting a settlement. But what she got was a summons, an order from the court, sued out by her father-in-law, to show cause why she shouldn’t be declared an unfit mother to her child. She won, by a hair, but then cooked up a real plan, which has you scared to death.”

“I still don’t know what you mean.”

“That we understand. But your campaign hasn’t worked, so why don’t we get on — talk about you and me?”

“My campaign has worked, Clay.”

“No — you talked just a little too much.”

“You’re in love with her, Clay.”

“No, no more. Sorry.”

“I can prove it — or think I can.”

“Interesting if true... How?”

“By watching your face when I tell you...”

“Tell me? What, for instance?”

She came over, took him by the forelock, and peered into his eyes as she said: “She’s going to be free this weekend.” Then she laughed at his sudden intake of breath, which came with his startled blink, and went on: “Mr. El is taking Elly for the Memorial Day weekend — she’ll have evenings for you and means to call you up. I know, as she asked me, when I dropped in for lunch at Portico, if I still had the number she’d given me, or need she give it to me again? I assured her I’d kept it. Now, have I proved it or not?”

“All you’ve proved is she’s calling me up.”

But his voice sounded thick, and she laughed once more as she dropped a cloth on the picture. “Why kid yourself?” she asked. “If you could see your face, you’d accept what it means.”

“I tell you, I’m through.”

“And I tell you, you’re not.”

The call came, at his office, she opening with the charge: “You louse, you’ve been ducking me — not answering your phone even once.” He protested he hadn’t been home; “we have all kinds of grief here at the goddam shop, refrigeration went on the fritz. I’ve been here every night.” He was oddly breathless about it, but she didn’t argue much, and quickly they arranged it, the dinner Friday night, she to arrive around seven, he to “do it big, with flowers and everything.” So, for the next day or so he lived on expectation, ordering bunches of roses and bringing home extra-fine steak, caviar, mushrooms, and champagne. But on Friday something happened that stood his world on its head. He was just back at his desk, from his afternoon tour of inspection, when Miss Helm appeared at his side, leaned close, and whispered: “There’s a Mr. Alexis to see you, with a girl... Mr. Lockwood, it’s the Great Alexis, I’m sure — you know, that guy at the Lilac Flamingo, the magician? And the girl, I think, is the one that works in his act... Is something wrong, Mr. Lockwood?”