Irving Wallace - The Man

“What a mind you have. Of course not, Sally. Don’t be silly. You know how I feel about you.”

She brought her long fingers to her crimson lips in a feigned pose of profound reflection. “I want to see if I can remember-how you feel about me, I mean. Ah yes, that last time in bed-when was it? Twelve nights ago? That was quite a session, wasn’t it?”

Eaton wanted to squirm. There was something about her, her too blond hair, her too darkly shadowed eyes, her too powdered cheeks, her too red lips, something about her flippant and coarsened speech, and something left over from the way she had behaved on the witness stand; there was all that which seemed to cheapen her and make her less attractive than she had ever been.

And now, her vulgar reference to their last time together. He wanted only to be done with her, to file her in his history as finished business, and be left alone to go on with life. But here she was, unfiled, and the vulgar question hung between them.

“Yes,” he said, “I-I won’t ever forget that evening.”

“How could you? I knew you wouldn’t. And I knew you hadn’t forgotten what you promised. You haven’t, have you?”

He had forgotten. The Lord save him from women. They remembered everything, everything. How could they expect a man to remember what he said-men said anything, they were all Alexanders promising empires-under those circumstances? What in the devil had he said? He could guess, but he would not, aloud. He waited. She would tell him.

“I’ve been waiting for you to call me, Arthur. I’ve been living for that call. What happened when you asked her? Will she give you the divorce, or will you have to go out to Reno and get it?”

Divorce, he thought. That was it. He must have been out of his mind. If treaties were made in bed, he thought, women would own the world. What in the devil could he say to her now, to be rid of her? The diplomatic truth, that was best; that was his style, and none exceeded him at it.

“Yes, of course, Sally, it has been on my mind, too, but you know, divorce is not that simple a matter,” he said pedantically. Almost instinctively, he was moving them away from the heated, irrational atmosphere of the bedroom into the cooler, logical surroundings of the civil courtroom. “You know my feelings about Kay, and you’ve known my feelings toward you, Sally. I have desired a divorce, and kept it no secret from you. However, I’ve suddenly come up against one hard mathematical fact of life. It takes two to accomplish a divorce, not one. I broached it to Kay on the telephone a few days ago, and she would not have it. She is adamant. Separation she will abide, but not a divorce. So all I can do, until I have definite grounds against her, is to work on her, wear her down, and trust that her own sense of decency-”

Sally’s pale face was cold. “She won’t give you a divorce? Or is that State Department Eatonese for-you’ve decided not to ask her?”

“Sally, I did ask her. She doesn’t give a damn about me, but she likes the idea of being married-”

“So do I, Arthur.”

“-and now she likes it more than ever, since everything seems to be changing in my life. She’s been watching that impeachment trial like everyone else. She has a good idea they’ll drum Dilman out of office. If they do, she sees herself in the White House as First Lady. There’s no use trying to reason with her about a divorce at present, not while the result of the trial is still pending. In fact, well, I’ll be honest with you, because you must believe in me, Sally-the fact is, Kay has decided to come back to Washington. She’s on her way back right now-she’s, well, she is the person I’m expecting in a half hour. She wants to be here for the kill tomorrow.”

Sally began to laugh, and then threw back her head and laughed hysterically, and it made Eaton uneasy to watch her. Then her laughter broke into a sob, and she choked to control it.

“This is too much,” she cried out, “too, too much, the irony, to think it’s my fault, I’m responsible for creating my own Frankenstein monster-me-doing what I did-snooping, spying, going through hell, suffering that goddam insulting exposure in the Senate today-those questions, I wanted to die-die-and what was it all for? For you, so you could become President, and now never leave that old bag who wants to be First Lady.”

“Sally, listen-”

She was breathing like a wounded animal now, and her eyes were glazed and staring. “But you know what’s worse, Arthur? That you’re lying to me, you are lying. You used me, like you use everyone, and I couldn’t see it because I wanted to be used, because I thought there’d be something in it for me, too. I should have known. There’s nothing for me. It’s all you, everything’s for you.”

“That is not true, Sally. If you’ll calm down a minute-”

She was too furious to listen. “I know what is true! You never asked your bag of a wife for a divorce. She’s not coming here to stand in the wings, hoping she’ll be First Lady. It’s you. You want to be President so badly, it smells, it stinks, the reek can be smelled a mile away. So no more bedroom gymnastics, no more, no more taking chances by you. You want to be there, lily-white and aristocratic and Ivy League, with the one and only wife of foreverness and togetherness on your arm, waiting in home beautiful, living the life beautiful, waiting for your country’s call the minute they boot that poor unbefitting nigger interloper out of your White House! Now everything’s got to be perfect, everything pure and American! Now you’ve got to quickly, quickly, sweep all dirt under the carpet, all dirt and maybe scandal, and there I go, under the carpet, too-”

“Stop it, Sally! You’re behaving like an insane-”

“Don’t you call me insane, you lousy, dirty no-good bastard!” she screamed, and then, before he could move, she drew her right hand back, flung it forward, and emptied the entire contents of her whiskey glass into his face.

As he sputtered, wiping his eyes and shirt with his handkerchief, she yelled, “I hope the whole world finds you out the way I did, you bastard!”

She ran out of the room, and out of the house; and Arthur Eaton, watching her, continuing to clean the dripping whiskey from his face and clothes, was no longer upset. In fact, he was pleased. It had been less costly than he had expected. For the price of a wet handkerchief, a change of apparel, and a minor indignity, he was rid of her forever.

Then, when she saw the door close, she started running.

Before that, Sally Watson did not know how long she had been waiting.

After leaving Arthur, and reeling down the cement steps into the lonely and darkened Georgetown street, she had not known where to turn, where to go. The two Secret Service men, in the car parked across the way, had pretended not to see her. She had pretended not to see them. She had started off, to nowhere, because there was no place left where she could any longer find peace from rage and shame, and then she had changed her mind.

She had come back toward the house, staying inside the shadows thrown by the stately mansions, hidden from the yellow pools of illumination under the streetlamps, and then, two houses from his, clinging to a chilled metal rail, in a recess out of sight, she had waited, senselessly waited, shivering, hating, waiting.

How long had it been, finally? Fifteen minutes? Twenty? However long it takes to die.

Once an automobile had drawn up, and it was not Kay Varney Eaton who had emerged, but five other persons, three of them male photographers, two of them (one whom she knew) women social columnists, and, chattering and cheerful, they had gathered on the sidewalk before Eaton’s residence.

Finally the limousine had arrived, and the chauffeur had leaped out and hastened to open the rear door. And there she was, that old woman, Kay Varney Eaton, tall and imperial, in her mink coat and mink hat, giving her diamond-laden hand and condescending stone smile to the serfs of the press. There were shrill questions, and requests to pose this way and that, and flashlight bulbs twinkling on and off, and then she had gone, First Lady-elect-almost, up the stairs. And at the top, horrid traitor’s face wreathed in a smile, Arthur was welcoming her, a self-conscious embrace before the cameras, an antiseptic cheek kiss, and then, a husbandly arm around her, he had taken her inside their house.