Эд Макбейн - Privileged Conversation

“I couldn’t lie to Helen that way,” David says.

“You’re my best friend, Dave.”

Sure, David thinks.

“At least think about it, will you?” Stanley says.

“Well, I’ll think about it.”

“Will you promise to think about it?”

“I promise, yes.”

“You don’t know how much it would mean to me, Dave.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Please.”

“I will.”

But he already knows it would work.

Curtain is at eight o’clock. The show lets out at ten-thirty. He tries her again at eleven and then again at eleven-thirty. When she does not call by midnight, he begins to believe he will never see her again.

He falls asleep wondering if Especially Ron, the Herpes King, has resurfaced.

The telephone rings at one o’clock in the morning.

He fumbles for the ringing phone in the dark, thinking at once that something has happened to Helen or the kids, a terrible accident, someone has drowned, knocking the receiver off the cradle, finding it again in the dark, picking it up, “Hello?”

“Hi.”

He does not know whether to feel irate or relieved. He does not turn on the light. He does not want to know what time it is, but he asks immediately, “What time is it?” and she says, “One, a little after one, am I waking you?”

“Yes,” he says.

“Oooo,” she says, “angry.”

He wonders if she’s been drinking.

“I’ve been calling you,” he says.

“All those hangups,” she says, “and no messages.”

“I didn’t know who might be listening with you.”

“Who do you think might be listening with me?”

There is a silence on the line.

He waits, hoping she will be the first one to speak again. The silence becomes unbearable. He wonders if she will hang up.

“Where were you?” he asks.

“When?”

“Well, for starters, how about all day long?”

“Oooo, angry, angry,” she says.

There is another silence, longer this time, broken at last by an exaggeratedly tragic sigh and then the sound of her voice again. “First, I went to see my agent,” she says. “That was at ten o’clock, but I slept late and had to rush out, which is why I couldn’t call you before I left the apartment. Anyway, I left at twenty to, and my window of opportunity wouldn’t have been till ten to, correct, Doctor? After my agent... he thinks he may have a movie for me, by the way, not that I guess it matters to you in your present frame of mind. Anyway, after my meeting with him, I went to my Wednesday morning dance class, I have dance three times a week. Then I went to the theater for the matinee performance, and had a sandwich and did a little shopping with a girlfriend afterwards, and went back to the apartment to drop off the things I’d bought, and then I took a nap, and let me see, I went out for a carrot shake, alone, at that health food deli on Fifty-seventh, and walked to the theater to get ready for the evening performance. Then I did the show, naturally, and went out for a bite with some of the kids afterwards, and then I came home. And here I am.”

“No phones any of those places, huh?”

“None at precisely ten minutes to the hour.”

“How about before you went to the theater?”

“I tried your office but you were already gone.”

“Did you leave a message?”

“I didn’t know who might be listening with you,” she says.

Touché, he thinks, and almost smiles.

“Did you try the apartment?”

“Yes. There was no answer. You were probably on the way there.”

“What time was that?”

“Around six. And I called again from the theater at seven-thirty, after I was in costume and doing my warm-ups.”

Which was when he’d gone down to dinner.

“I’m sorry we kept missing each other,” she says.

“Was Ron with you?”

“Ron?”

“When you went out for a bite with the kids?”

“Ron’s in Australia. Ron? ”

“So who were these kids?”

Her calling them “kids” makes him feel like Methuselah. On the twenty-seventh of the month, he will be forty-six years old. His grandfather was forty-six when he died of lung cancer. Now he is forty-six. Well, almost forty-six. And Kate is twenty-seven and she goes out for a bite with “kids” from the show.

“The girl who plays Demeter,” she says, “and the girl who plays Bombalurina and the guy who plays Munkustrap. He’s gay, if you’re wondering. You have nothing to worry about,” she says. “I love you to death. I thought of you all day long.”

“I thought of you, too.”

“There are two pay phones backstage,” she says. “I can let you have both numbers. So something like today won’t happen again. Our missing each other.”

“I guess I should have them,” he says.

But he wonders how he can possibly use either number. Call backstage and have someone other than Kate answer the phone? Risk that? Who shall I say is calling, please? Whom? Who. Who ever , it definitely ain’t me , mister. A married man named David Chapman calling a showgirl in a cat costume, are you kidding?

“I’m sorry I woke you,” she says. “But I just got home.”

He’s wondering why she didn’t call before she left the theater. From one of the pay phones backstage. But he imagines they’re all ravenously hungry after a performance, all those cats leaping around for two and a half hours, well, not quite that long when you count intermission, but even so. They must all be eager to change into their street clothes and get the hell out of there, put some food in their bellies. He wonders what she wears when she goes to and from the theater. Blue jeans? He wonders if anyone recognizes her when she’s walking in the street— Hey, look, Maude, there goes that girl from Cats . He supposes not. He himself didn’t recognize her in makeup, and he’d already known her before he saw the show.

“...shooting it in New York,” she is telling him, “or I wouldn’t even think of considering it. Leave you to go on location? No way. It’s a costume drama, where I’d be playing the confidante of the female lead who’s having an affair with a Russian diplomat. She’s British. So am I, if I get the part. What it is, they’ve taken Ninotchka and changed the Russian girl to a Brit and the American guy to a Russian diplomat, and they’ve set it all back in the eighteenth century. At least, that’s the way the producer described it to me. In Hollywood, they can only think of movies in terms of other movies. Tunnel vision, it’s called. Which, by the way, was a movie, wasn’t it? Tunnel Vision? Or a book? Or something? I’d have to learn a British accent again, I had a pretty good one when we did Lady Windermere’s Fan in high school. British accents are easier to learn than almost...”

He tries to imagine what she’s wearing now. What color are her fingernails today? Has she already undressed for bed? But no, she just got home after a bite with the kids. He visualizes her bed. Visualizes her in her bed. Does she wear a nightgown when he’s not there making love to her? Is she wearing a nightgown now?

“...why you never ask me about myself,” she is saying now. “Don’t you want to know how I became a dancer, how I happened to land in Cats when I was only seventeen? Don’t you want to know if my parents are still living together, or if they’re divorced, or if I have any sisters or brothers... well, you know I have a sister, you read that in the program notes. But don’t you want to know anything at all about me, David? You’re supposed to love me so much...”