Эд Макбейн - Privileged Conversation

The steaks are good.

He doesn’t very often eat red meat because he is a physician and well aware of the fact that his father suffered a serious heart attack when he was only fifty-seven, eleven years from now on David’s personal calendar. Moreover, until six years ago, he was smoking two packs of cigarettes a day — Marlboros, no less — and he knows his former habit increases his relatively high genetic risk. No need, therefore, to increase the old cholesterol intake, hmm? No need either, he supposes, to take this risk tonight, perhaps far more dangerous to his health than any tiny little cholesters, as he thinks of them, swimming around and clogging his arteries.

They are on coffee and dessert when Kate asks whether it might be possible for them to get out of the city for the next two nights, maybe find a little country inn...

“Well, I...”

“...someplace, figure out something...”

“I’d have to talk to Stanley first,” he says. “Make sure he can justify...”

“You can say one of the lecturers lives out of town.”

“That’s a possibility.”

“And can’t travel because he broke his leg or something.”

“Like you.”

“God forbid. All I told him was that I sprained my ankle. Which leaves me free, you see. That’s why I thought...”

“I guess there’s nothing really tying us to the city, is there?”

“Not until my ankle heals.”

“Where’d you have in mind?”

“Not Massachusetts. Too close to her.”

“Connecticut then?”

“Too close to her. ”

He looks at her, puzzled.

“I was thinking maybe New Hope,” she says. “Have you ever been to New Hope?”

“Once. Long ago.”

“With her?”

“With Helen, yes.”

But why does she think Connecticut is close to Martha’s Vineyard? Or has he misunderstood her?

“I’ll talk to Stanley,” he says. “See what he thinks.”

“Don’t leave the thinking to Stanley. Stanley sounds like a jackass.”

“He is.”

“Then tell him what you’d like to do...”

“Well, I can’t...”

“Not about me , of course. Just say you’re finding it very dreary, hanging around all alone in the city, and you’d like to get out of town, and you’ve figured out a way to make it sound plausible.”

“Yes, what’s the way?”

“I don’t know. You’re the married one. I don’t have to make excuses.”

“You’ve already made one to your stage manager.”

“Yes, but not because I wanted to get out of town.”

The band is playing something he recognizes, but it’s something everyone recognizes, Artie Shaw’s arrangement of “Stardust.” The dance floor is suddenly filled again with stiletto-thin men and women, gliding, floating, drifting to the sound of the soaring clarinet. He tells her about the time he was in Liberty Music on Madison Avenue and Artie Shaw was in there buying records. This was around Christmastime, oh, ten, twelve years ago...

“I was fifteen,” she says.

“Well, yes, I suppose you were. Shaw was buying dozens of albums as gifts. He told the clerk he had a charge at the store, and the clerk said, ‘Yes, sir, may I have your name, please?’ And Shaw said, ‘Artie Shaw,’ and the clerk said ‘Is that S-H-O-R-E, sir?’”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m serious. A music store.”

“Didn’t know Artie Shaw.”

“Incredible.”

“ Everybody knows Artie Shaw.”

“ Sic transit gloria mundi, ” David says.

“ Our Gloria?” Kate asks, and they both laugh.

“Why did you tell him you sprained your ankle? I thought it was because...”

“He called me.”

“Who? Your stage manager?”

“No, Artie Shaw.”

“Really, who...?”

“The nut who sent me the flowers and...”

“Called...?”

“...the letters. Yes.”

“Where?”

“Backstage.”

“At the theater? ”

“Yes.”

“Aren’t those numbers unlisted?”

“Yes.”

“Then how...?”

“I don’t know. David, I’m very frightened. That’s why I want to leave the city. That’s the real reason.”

“Kate,” he says, “you have to go to the police again.”

“No, I can’t. He warned me not to.”

“Then call Clancy. Ask him to come see you. I’m sure he’d be willing to...”

“Sure, in New York? Anyway, how can I call him?”

“Why not?”

“He’d find out.”

“How can he possibly...?”

“He knows everything I do !”

“How can he hear a phone call you make from your own...?”

“How do I know? How’d he get the number at the theater?”

“Are you sure it was him?”

“Of course. Who do you think it was?”

“Maybe someone you know. Maybe someone playing a...”

“I don’t have friends who kid around that way. Besides he called me Puss, of course it was him.”

“You didn’t give Rickie either of those numbers, did you?”

“No.”

“Who else has them?”

“Everybody in the show.”

“I mean, who’d you give them to?”

“My agent, of course. And my mother. A few friends...”

“How about your sister?”

“My sister doesn’t make phone calls.”

“What do you mean?”

“My sister is in Whiting.”

“Whiting?”

“The Whiting Forensic Institute. In Middletown, Connecticut.”

The band is playing “Gently, Sweetly.” A male vocalist croons into the microphone. A mirrored globe rotates over the dance floor. Spotlights strike its myriad facets and beam splinters of reflected light to every corner of the room. Across the table, Kate’s face seems shattered with light.

“It’s a maximum security hospital,” she says.

“Gently...”

“For the criminally insane.”

“Sweetly...”

“Burning down the house was just the start.”

“More and more...”

“Completely...”

“She tried to kill my father.”

“Take me...”

“Make me...”

“Yours.”

The band’s saxophone section — two altos and two tenors — modulates from the singer’s key to a somewhat higher one that lends a soaring semblance to the next chorus.

David is staring at her now.

“Yes,” she says, and nods in dismissal.

The song ends.

They order coffee.

They hold hands across the table.

They dance some more.

She doesn’t wish to discuss her sister further at this present time, thank you.

He respects her wishes.

Frankly, he doesn’t want to open that can of worms, anyway.

When she excuses herself to go to the ladies’ room, he tells her he’ll meet her near the coat check at the front door, and then pays the check and goes to the men’s room.

Dr. Chris Fielding is pissing in the urinal alongside his.

“David!” he says, cock in hand, “how are you?”

“Fine, fine, Chris, and you?” David says, unzipping his fly, thinking Jesus, did he spot us on the dance floor, does he know I’m here with, Jesus, Helen knows him, Helen knows his wife , Jesus Christ!

Side by side, they urinate.

“How do you like this place?” Chris asks.

“Great, great.”

“What does Helen think?”

Helen?

Helen thinks I’m listening to Dr. Gianfranco Donato giving a talk on Learning and Motor Skill Disorders at the Lotos Club, is what Helen thinks, he thinks, and immediately says, “I’m here alone. Helen’s on the Vineyard.”