Jill Emerson - The Trouble With Eden

At the pay telephone Olive brought herself back to life again. She dropped a coin into the slot, dialed a number. An operator asked for more money, and she deposited another coin.

When Linda answered, she said briskly, “Olive, Linda. How’s business?”

Business, it seemed, was going well enough. “Then I won’t keep you,” she said. “I’m still at Doylestown General. He’s coming along nicely, but I’ll be here another week at the least. Just carry on in your usual capable fashion. Oh, there is one thing. Don’t sell any of Clem’s paintings.”

“It’s good you told me. Someone almost bought one about an hour ago. He was going to bring his wife back after dinner, but I’ll tell him it’s not for sale.”

“No, don’t do that. That’s not what I meant.” Her voice almost broke; she stopped herself in time and waited for a moment. “Not what I meant at all. I want you to give them away.”

“Pardon me?”

“Whenever anyone admires one, give it away free of charge. Only if the admiration is serious. Take the tags off, and if anyone asks the price find out if they’re really interested, and then make them a gift of whatever it is. Just one to a customer, though.”

“I think I understand. Just the ones on the wall or the ones in back as well?”

“All of them. There are only a few in back.” She chuckled. “At these prices they ought to move quickly. There’s a key to my house in the lockbox in back. Could you do me a favor? If you start to run out of canvases, take a run over to my place and replenish the supply. Start with the unframed canvases in the little room off the kitchen. Those should last out the week, but if they don’t, you can help yourself to the ones on the walls downstairs.”

“Won’t you want to keep some of them?”

“My favorites are upstairs on the second floor. I’d like to see the others given the widest possible exposure.”

“Olive—”

“I can’t talk anymore, Linda. You’ll do that for me, won’t you? Thank you.”

Her hand shook as she replaced the receiver. She walked back down the corridor as she had walked to the phone, slowly, wearily, a picture of resignation. But another transformation occurred before she reached the door of their room, and it was as if the film the nurse’s aide had seen were run in reverse. She entered smiling and had already thought of a bright and cheerful opening line.

Warren folded the piece of paper and tucked it into the inside breast pocket of his jacket. He drank some coffee, checked his watch, looked across the table at Peter.

“You had no trouble getting it?”

“She got the point right away. If they had Robin’s birth certificate we were in deep trouble. I’m glad she didn’t ask why. I guess I would have come up with something but God knows what.”

Warren nodded.

“Then she couldn’t find it. She was looking in the wrong drawer and she figured out that they already had the fucking thing and was sure we were going to be completely shafted. You want to hear something crazy? She had me terrified. I was dreaming up all kinds of shit — that they really had it and there really was a conspiracy—”

“Good grief.”

“I don’t think I ever really believed that. I was just afraid I was going to start believing it any minute. And I also thought she saw through everything and was stringing me along and purposely not finding the birth certificate. I may be more paranoid than she is.”

“But she did find it. That’s a blessing. Robin is quite content to be with Anne. A remarkably agreeable girl.”

“Well, she knows Anne. That helps.”

“I was speaking of Anne, though Robin is agreeable, too, I’ll admit. Anne’s rather extraordinary. I’ve told her everything, by the way. I saw no reason to keep any of it back. As far as Danny’s concerned, she went to her doctor, and he sent her to a clinic for tests, and I gave her a ride there in my car. So there are four of us who know about this. You and I and Anne and the good Dr. Loewenstein.”

“Will anyone else have to know?”

“I sincerely hope not. It would simplify my life enormously if Tony could know, but nothing on earth would persuade me to tell him. Instead he simply thinks the world’s gone mad. Your performance last night, and now I’m missing rehearsal. And I never miss rehearsals. I simply gave no explanation at all. They can put anyone up here to read my lines off a script. It’s no great hardship.” He grimaced. “But I can’t miss tonight’s performance. Thank all Gods there’s no matinee tomorrow.” He checked his watch again. “I think I’ll go see how the girls are getting along. And closet myself in my bedroom to practice my couchside manner. You’re holding up well, aren’t you?”

“Am I? I guess I am.”

“It gets easier as it goes along. Like sodomy. Pay for my coffee, will you? I’m off.”

She was wrapping a painting when she saw Tanya outside in the hallway. The young actress was walking arm in arm with a tall boy with long hair and a Zapata mustache. Linda had seen them together before.

The painting’s new owner was reluctant to leave. She kept saying how willing she would have been to pay for it. “I feel so guilty,” she kept saying. “Could I buy one of the others? This is my favorite, but there are others I like as well.”

Linda explained that she couldn’t take money for any of them and that they were one to a customer. The woman assured her that she hadn’t been trying to make off with another free one and ultimately left saying that she would donate the price of the painting to charity.

The shop was empty of customers, and Linda was grateful. She sat down and put her head in her hand. She thought she knew why Olive wanted her to give the paintings away and only wished it were not so depressing. It would have been bad enough if people would just take the things and be grateful, but they always wanted to talk about it and she couldn’t bring herself to explain the situation.

On a better day she would have invented a story. But this was not one of her better days. There had been few enough of those lately. Everything got to her.

Tanya, for example. Tanya had a boyfriend, and that almost certainly meant that Tanya had a lover; the girl was hardly the sort given to long courtship or platonic relationships. Bill Donatelli had been replaced while his body was still warm.

Well, she admitted, that was not quite true. And Tanya was not yet living with the new one. She was still sleeping nights in her room at the Shithouse. She had moved back in after that one night in Linda’s bed — and how she could have managed that was another thing Linda did not understand. In a while Tanya might move in with her new lover, or he might move in with her, but for the time being Tanya slept alone.

But why did this bother her? A new love was just what Tanya needed, and it was healthy that she was able to accept it. Linda had no loyalty to Bill Donatelli’s memory. So why should she find the sight of the two of them, arm in arm and obviously delighted with one other, so personally disturbing?

She thought of Tanya and Bill and Olive and Clem. She thought of love and death and how the two seemed to go together in a hideous progression. Love and Death walked arm in arm, as obviously delighted with each other as Tanya and the boy with the mustache.

The phone rang. Hugh. He had just finished work for the day. The book was going well; it was going better than that; he was just pages from the end and would finish it tomorrow. And a premature celebration was just what he was in the mood for, and would she have dinner with him?

“I can’t,” she said; “I have to work tonight.”

Well, how about a late dinner? Or just a few drinks after she closed for the night?