Эд Макбейн - Privileged Conversation

“No sharks in here,” she says playfully.

Tilts her head to one side. Towel wrapped around it like a turban.

“Give me your hand, okay?” she says.

Smiling.

“Don’t you want to?”

Lifting one eyebrow.

“Say.”

Her voice turning suddenly harsh.

“ Do it!”

He plunges his hand into the foam, wetting his sleeve to the elbow.

“Yes,” she says.

And finds her.

“Yes.”

“I want to get away for a few days,” he hears himself telling Stanley. “Tonight and tomorrow night. Go down to New Hope maybe. Or someplace else in Pennsylvania. I’ll fly back to the Vineyard on Saturday, from wherever I happen to be.”

“Why?”

Careful, he thinks.

“I’m getting cabin fever,” he says.

“But I’m not, Davey.”

Davey? he thinks. When did I get to be Davey? Just when I was getting used to being Dave.

Stanley has taken the subway downtown to Fifty-ninth and Lex, and has met David outside Bloomingdale’s, as arranged. Their Thursday morning stroll takes place on East Fifty-seventh Street as the two men saunter westward toward Victoria’s Secret, where Stanley hopes to purchase lingerie suitable for his nineteen-year-old delight.

“I don’t want to leave the city,” he says. “I even hate having to go out for food . So why would I choose to go to New Hope, of all places? I’m perfectly happy doing just what I’m doing. Life is sweet, Davey, and time is short.”

He is dressed for his lingerie-shopping expedition in clothes that look as if he’s slept in them. Perhaps he has. Aside from Tuesday night’s visit to Bertinelli’s, he and Cindy have not budged from his office. His beard has grown several inches since the last time David saw him. He looks like a homeless person who hasn’t shaved in a month. A derelict who sleeps on the sidewalk in a cardboard box or else on a black leather couch in some philandering psychiatrist’s office. He can’t wait to get back to his little Cindy. He wants to buy her some crotchless panties and a garter belt...

“I don’t think they sell crotchless panties,” David says.

“Oh, of course they do.”

“Victoria’s Secret, I mean.”

“Then I’ll find them someplace else. You ought to buy some panties for Helen today,” he suggests. “I certainly plan to buy some for Gerry.”

“Stanley, let’s get back to this, okay?”

“Davey, I do not want to leave the city.”

“I do.”

“Why are you so eager to get out of town?”

Their eyes meet.

He knows, David thinks.

“I’m bored,” he says.

“So go eat your chocolates.”

David doesn’t get the reference. Nor does Stanley bother to explain it. They are approaching Victoria’s Secret now. Stanley looks in the window. He doesn’t see any crotchless panties, and he confesses that he’s somewhat embarrassed to go inside and ask for them. Will David ask the salesclerk for a pair of crotchless panties, size five?

“They don’t carry crotchless panties,” David says.

“Would it hurt to ask?”

“I’ll ask, but it’ll be a waste of time.”

“So will any story we give our wives about getting out of town.”

David looks at him.

“I’ve been at this a long time, hmm?” Stanley says with his crooked little shark grin buried in his beard. “Not with a patient, that’s a first. And never with a nineteen-year-old, that’s a first, too. But a long time, Davey. A long long time. And I can tell you what a woman will buy and what a woman will not buy. And no woman’s going to believe that thirty psychiatrists attending a conference in New York are going to shlepp all the way down to New Hope...”

“It doesn’t have to be New Hope.”

“ Wherever the hell. It won’t wash, Davey. They won’t buy it. And if we try to sell it, we’d be jeopardizing everything we have going for us. So the answer is no.”

“Stanley...”

“No,” he says again.

And of course he’s right.

And of course he knows.

Luis the doorman seems pleased to see him, and asks how Mrs. Chapman and the “leetle gorls” are enjoying the seashore. David tells him they’re fine, thanks, just fine, and then goes to the lobby mailbox to see if anything has collected there. He is here at the building only to establish a pattern in the unlikely event Helen and Luis ever get into a conversation about his comings and goings. He goes upstairs as part of the deception. Ten minutes later, he is downstairs again and walking uptown to his office.

Gualterio, the doorman there, seems equally happy to see him and asks if he is already back at work again. David tells him he’s here for some lectures and won’t begin seeing patients again till the fifth of September, the day after Labor Day. Gualterio tells him to enjoy the rest of the summer, and then rushes to the curb when a taxi pulls up.

Again David is here only to establish a pattern; all is pattern, all is deceit. He checks for mail, goes into his office, sits behind his desk. Dust motes restlessly climb the shaft of sunshine slanting in through the blinds. On impulse, he looks through his Wheeldex for Jacqueline Hicks’s office number, and then debates calling her.

But why would he want to?

And what will he say if he reaches her?

Hi, I’m having an affair with a former patient of yours, and I was wondering if you might be able to give me any insights into her behavior?

Absurd.

He dials the number, anyway.

An answering machine tells him Dr. Hicks is away for the summer.

Tonight, Kate is wearing an outfit designed to complement the setting she herself has chosen. For this is moonlight and roses, this is candlelight and wine, this is soft violins and soft-spoken waiters, this is cautious footfalls and discreet silences. To echo this faintly Mozartian locale, or perhaps to startle it into modernity, she has chosen to wear a very short double-layered silk organza dress, its bottom layer an apricot color, its top layer a gossamer tangerine — “They had it in blue and green,” she says, “but Fee the Fair says blue and green should never be seen.” She looks like a frothy double-flavored cotton-candy confection. Her long legs are bare, her feet slippered in high-heeled tangerine-colored patent-leather slides. A misty blue eye makeup causes her green eyes to snap and snarl.

He remembers the joke Stanley fumbled so badly this morning, and he tells it to Kate as they wait for their dinners to arrive. They are sipping champagne. He remembers the bottle of champagne in the limo. He remembers everything about her. It is almost as if she has been a part of his life forever.

It seems this little boy is sitting in his first-grade class with his hand in his lap when his teacher spots him. “What are you doing there?” she asks, and he tells her he’s playing with his balls. “Why are you doing that?” she asks, and he tells her he’s lonely. “Oh, you’re lonely , are you?” she says, and she drags him down the hall to the principal’s office, and whispers in his ear, and leaves the two of them alone. It isn’t long before the kid’s hand is in his lap again...

“I love it,” Kate says.

...and the principal asks what he’s doing there and he says he’s playing with his balls and the principal asks why and the kid says because he’s lonely and the principal sends for the kid’s parents and they decide to remand the kid to a psychiatrist.

“Enter the shrink,” Kate says.

“So they take the kid to a psychiatrist,” David says, “and the two of them sit staring at each other for a little while until the kid’s hand at last drops into his lap again, and the psychiatrist asks, ‘Vot are you zoing dere?’ Well, the kid tells him he’s playing with his balls, and the psychiatrist asks, ‘Vhy are you zoing dat?’ And the kid tells him it’s because he’s lonely, and the psychiatrist says, ‘Oh, come now, lonely . Vot are you, fife, zix years oldt? How can you bossibly be...?’ and the telephone rings on his desk. He picks it up, listens, says, ‘Ja, hold on vun minute, please,’ and excuses himself to go take the call in the other room. When he comes back to his office, he sits behind his desk and says, ‘Zo tell me, how can a poy, fife, zix years...’ and stops dead and looks at his desk and says, ‘Vhen I left zis office, dere vass a two-pound pox of chocolates on z’desk. Now z’chocolates are all gone. Zid you eat z’chocolates?’ The kid tells him Yes, he ate the chocolates. ‘Vhy zid you do dat?’ the psychiatrist asks. ‘I vass gone only fife minutes, you ate a whole two-pound pox of chocolates? Vhy? ’ The kid says, ‘Because I was lonely.’ And the psychiatrist says, ‘Zo vhy didn’t you play vid your palls?’”