Эд Макбейн - Privileged Conversation

As she explains all this to him, displaying the charts and the lists and the days on her calendar, she constantly checks her watch, fearful that her hour will run out before she completes the recitation and demonstration, thereby placing her mother in Omaha in extreme danger of decapitation or defenestration or any of a hundred other dire possibilities. It is with enormous relief — which David incidentally shares, so high is the level of anxiety in this office — that she is able to tell him in the remaining few minutes what she’ll be wearing to her session on the day after Labor Day. “The man-tailored pinstriped suit,” she says, “with black heels, black shirt and white-scarf tie, and black undies and panty hose, phew!” Before she leaves the office, she ascertains once again the date and time of their next session, and then holds out her hand like an embarrassed little girl, smiles shyly, and says, “Have a nice summer, Dr. Chapman.”

He shakes her hand.

“You, too, Susan,” he says.

When he steps out of his office building at ten minutes to two, a long black limo is waiting at the curb. The rear window instantly rolls down, and Kate’s head appears. She says nothing, merely smiles. He walks immediately to the car.

“Hi,” she says. “Want a lift?”

He looks at her in wonder, slowly shaking his head from side to side in pleased amazement. “Where’d you get this?” he asks.

“I ordered it, where do you think I got it? Get in.”

He gets into the car. It smells of rich black leather and polished walnut panels. A bottle of iced champagne sits in a silver bucket on the side console. The driver turns to her.

“Is it Newark, miss?” he asks.

“It’s Newark,” she says.

She is wearing what looks like a tennis skirt, short and white and flirty, topped with a sheer pink tank and a white cotton jacket. On her feet, she wears white strappy heels and shocking-pink anklets to match the top. Her fingernails are painted the same outrageous pink. Her legs are bare.

“Why don’t you open the champagne?” she suggests.

He fiddles with the wire, unwraps the foil, pops the cork. Foam overspills the slender dark neck of the bottle. He pours into two glasses from the side console, hands one to her, replaces the bottle, and then lifts his own glass in a toast.

“To the fifteenth,” he says.

“To us, ” she corrects.

“To us and the fifteenth.”

“Four whole nights together,” she says.

“Yes.”

“I’ll invite Gloria,” she whispers, and turns her head toward him. Her eyes meet his.

“Just for one of the nights,” he says.

“Whatever you want.”

“I want you. ”

“You’d better,” she says. “But I know you liked Gloria, too, didn’t you?”

They are still whispering. He glances at the rearview mirror on the windshield above the driver’s head. The driver’s eyes seem fastened to the road.

“Yes, of course I liked her, but...”

“I’ll get her again, she’s very sexy. Didn’t you think she was sexy?”

“Very,” he says, and glances into the rearview mirror again. The driver’s eyes are still on the road.

“Very, yes, right,” Kate whispers. “Or I can find someone else, if that’s what you’d prefer.”

“I told you, all I want...”

“Yes, but you’re lying. Last night you wanted Gloria, too. I’ll get her for you again. Maybe before you go back up again. On your last night here maybe. Like this time.”

“If that’s what you want.”

“It’s what you want,” she whispers sharply, and begins furiously jiggling one sandaled foot.

The big car rolls steadily downtown toward the tunnel. Holding hands, they sip champagne. She keeps jiggling her foot. He glances at her bare legs. Without looking at him, she tosses the switch that rolls up the glass privacy panel, and stretches one leg onto the folding seat in front of her.

By the time they reach the airport, his lips are raw, his trousers stained. She gets out of the car after him, and throws her arms around his neck, and kisses him stickily, fiercely, in plain view of the passengers moving in and out of the terminal. Looking directly into his face, her eyes locked on his, her lips not inches from his mouth, she says, “You’d better not forget me.”

“I won’t.”

“You’d better not,” she warns.

That evening before curtain time, a dozen red roses are delivered to her dressing room.

The enclosed handwritten card reads:

“Of course you do,” she says aloud.

On Saturday evening, another dozen roses are delivered to the dressing room. Like the roses that arrived last night and again this afternoon before the matinee performance, they are long-stemmed and blood-red, nesting on a bosky glen of fern and baby’s breath, wrapped in green tissue paper in a long white box. The enclosed card again reads I love you, Kathryn . But each of the three bouquets — now arranged in vases that crowd virtually everything else off Kate’s makeup table — are from different florists, and the handwriting is different on each card. Which of course means that David called the orders in before he left and dictated the message for each card. I love you, Kathryn . Written in a different florist’s hand each time.

The only performers with private dressing rooms are the five principals in the show — what Actors Equity calls white contracts — and only one of these is a woman, Grizabella. The rest of the cast are all so-called pink contracts and share dressing rooms to a greater or lesser extent. Kate shares her dressing room with eight other dancers and two booth-singer swings. In a so-called dancing show like this one, most of the performers have at one time or another gone on for anyone who is sick or merely “indisposed,” as the expression has it, or responding to a “family obligation.” The dancers who share this room are interchangeable cogs in a choreographic machine; on stage, under all that heavy makeup and furry attire, they even look alike.

Now, as they paint on their cat faces and squeeze into their cat costumes, even their voices begin to sound alike, their conversation echoing a thousand backstage dialogues Kate has heard in dozens of other dressing rooms. Tonight — as is almost invariably the case — the talk is of men. Or, to be more exact, the talk is of a specific man, Kate’s “Secret Admirer” or — as she is surprised to hear him called by dancers even younger than she is — her “Stage Door Johnny” or “Sugar Daddy,” expressions that went out of fashion long before any of them were born.

“Roses don’t come cheap these days,” Rumpleteazer says.

“Marla Trump better watch out,” Sillabub says.

“Is this the guy who picked you up earlier this week?” Jennyanydots asks.

“When was that?” Demeter asks. “Wednesday?”

“The tall gangly guy with the glasses?”

Wait’ll he hears that description, Kate thinks. But she is secretly pleased that David’s extravagance has caused her to become the center of attention here in a room she shares with women she secretly believes are much better performers than she is. The other “kids.” All of whom can sing and dance rings around her.

“Oh, I get it,” one of the dancer-swings says. “Some girl named Kathryn is sending you flowers with I-love-you notes.”

“This is beginning to get ridiculous,” Bombalurina says.