Brian Garfield: Villiers Touch

She played with a pencil, speculating, a walnut-haired woman with skin pulled taut across the good high bones, the sweep of her eyebrows emphasized in pencil. She knew she was beautiful, not with the padded softness of early youth, but with the pared-down bone beauty of thirtyish maturity. She had seen few men since the divorce, and those few only casually; she had plunged deep into her work. She didn’t want to admit she was afraid of herself in a man’s company, but she couldn’t forget the things Russ had said to her. She wanted very desperately not to believe him: “It’s got to the point where you’re doling out warmth by the teaspoonful.” Words blurted in the anger of the moment, admittedly-but sometimes when she glimpsed herself in the mirror, she thought the eyes were a bit too cool, a bit glittering.

Her friends in art and business claimed to envy her; with awe they assured her she had reached the exalted nirvana of the parlor psychologist: she was well adjusted. But adjusted to what?

The result of a collapsed marriage was always self-pity. She had seen it often enough in others. It was, she knew, time to come out of the self-imposed period of mourning. She began to look forward to Mason Villiers’ call.

Cynthia MacNee came batting into the office like a clumsy brunette sheepdog. It was always a surprise to view that pretty, shield-shaped face atop the ungainly hugeness of her. She wasn’t unattractive; were it not for her horsey way of moving and the absurdity of her costumes, she might have been regarded as statuesque and lovely. She had to be in constant social motion, or she would perish; her overwhelming energy and furious bounce were awe-inspiring. She said loudly, with her customary twinkling urbanity, “I know a lot about art, but I know what I like, and this season’s horse shit isn’t either one.”

“Stop being silly. It isn’t all that bad. In fact, quite a few of them are good.”

“You’re a Philistine. I’m the buyer around here, I’m supposed to be the expert on art, and I say that stuff would be a swindle if you peddled it at three-ninety-eight a yard. My deah, a painting is supposed to capture a feeling that will rouse you when you look at it. Even revulsion will do. But these are just nyeh.” Cynthia threw up her arms and wailed, “Where oh where are the promising young geniuses of yesteryear? I’d like to sue them all for breach of promise!”

“Wherever they are,” Diane answered mildly, “they’re not offering paintings to us for thirty dollars per original oil. I’m sorry these are beneath you, but let’s not forget we have fourteen offices down that corridor occupied by men and women who get paid to supply paintings and whatnot to sixty-one galleries. You’re welcome to junk the whole lot if you like, but you’ve got just two weeks left to replace it.”

Cynthia blinked and scowled. “Quit sounding like a shop foreman. Where’s your barefoot dash?”

It made Diane look away in discomfort. “I’m sorry. Was I being hard-boiled again?”

“A little. Honey, don’t you recognize the symptoms when I start to bitch and moan like this? It’s only frustration because they haven’t invited me to be acquisitions chief at the Met. With my background, in this crass job of yours I’m slumming.”

“And getting paid twice what you’d get at the Met.”

“See what I mean?” Cynthia demanded. “Crass!”

Diane poked her pencil toward the big girl. “I see it now. The real trouble is, you’ve broken up with the latest boyfriend.”

“Curses! Foiled again!” Cynthia cried. “Am I that transparent? You sting me to the quick!”

“It happens every other week.” Diane smiled with half her mouth. “I’m beginning to recognize the signs. Who was it this time, young Ted Raine?”

“How did you know?”

“You’ve bought too many God-awful paintings of his.”

Cynthia’s face fell. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to-I usually don’t let that kind of thing interfere with my judgment. It won’t happen again-were they really God-awful?”

“Pretty bad. How’d you manage to get rid of him? Insult his mother?”

“No, that was the last one.” A crafty gleam came into Cynthia’s eye. “At a really passionate moment, I called him Phyllis.” She winked elaborately and exploded in barking laughter that doubled her over.

Diane shook her head in ironic disbelief. “Only you could have thought that one up. He must have left at full gallop.”

“He almost forgot his pants,” Cynthia gasped through her tears. She straightened up, gave a few post-paroxysm snorts of subsiding laughter, and dragged a vinyl sleeve across her eyes. She added weakly, “You should’ve seen his stricken face.”

“Why do you do it?”

“Oh, hell, honey, they make me want to puke when they get so damned serious and intense. I can’t help it, it just comes out. Sex is supposed to be fun.”

Diane put the pencil down. “Easy to say. Not all of us can be so carefree about it.”

“Hah!” Cynthia roared, and composed her face to snarl in her Humphrey Bogart rasp, “Now you liften here, fweetheart, ya gotta think of yourfelf af a fwinger, fee?” She came to the front of the desk and braced both long arms against it, leaned forward, and peered close. “What good does it do to make a ladies’ magazine heroine out of yourself, all the time waiting for love? Shit, there are all kinds of things you can get along without if you have to-arms, legs, eyesight. Lots of people do. Love. Okay, forget it-you just take stock of what you’ve got left, and you convince yourself it’s just as important, and maybe a whole lot more fun. I wasn’t kidding just now-it’s a hell of a lot easier to tolerate yourself if you think of yourself as a swinger instead of using a loaded word like ‘promiscuous.’ Why lock yourself up in a chastity belt? Think of what you’re missing out on.” She straightened and lunged around the room, talking with big swings of her arms. “Do I sound like some old Lana Turner movie on the late show? Hell, put it down to my stunted intellect-I started smoking when I was fourteen. But it makes me a little sad to see you locking yourself up, and I hate things that make me sad. It’s a swinging world, honey-there aren’t any hellfire-brimstone Calvinists around here to punish a girl for going out and getting laid when she feels like it. Why do it yourself with leg irons and twenty lashes of Freudian guilt?”

“You make it sound simple.”

“Do I? That’s the disadvantaged child in me. I make profound truths sound like comic-book cliches. Now, if I had your breeding, I could make even the most nonsensical small talk sound distinguished-think what I could do with the Great Truths! Christ, I’d hang out a shingle and put a couch in my office and charge two hundred dollars an hour!”

The intercom buzzed. Diane flicked a switch, and the secretary’s voice came through: “I’m going out to lunch now, Mrs. Hastings. Shall I switch incoming calls to your phone?”

“Yes, thank you, Maude.”

The intercom clicked; Cynthia said immediately, “You ought to tell her to quit calling you Mrs. Hastings.”

“Oh, I’m still Mrs. Hastings to the trade-it would be too confusing to change my name back now.”

Cynthia stopped patrolling; she stopped with her shoulder blades against the wall, folded her arms, and said, “Come off it, dahling. That’s not the real reason.”

“If you’re suggesting I’m still-”

“In love with Russ? No; even I am not that cornball. What I’m suggesting is that you give yourself a kind of untouchable immunity as long as you keep that ‘Mrs.’ in front of your name. And I don’t think it’s healthy.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I simply don’t want to resume my maiden name, because I’ve always been too proud to trade on my father’s name. Really, Cynthia, sometimes I wish you’d quit jumping to conclusions.”