Making Love Read online

  He was about to ask how she felt about cosigning at the bank, but since he was a sensitive reader of character and a diplomat, he did not press the subject.

  “Remember me?” Conlon asked.

  “Sure, you're my mistress. How's your Irish father? I keep having dreams that I'm going to be murdered by two guys dressed as priests.”

  “I love you,” Conlon said.

  “Listen to the way she talks to a married man. You kids, it's your tomorrow, I'm thirty-seven, part of the in-between generation. The last of the achievers. Jane, are you ready for a party?”

  “Not exactly. I'm kind of stuck here for the weekend.”

  “Can't go home?”

  “Right.”

  “Conlon, what a day I've had,” he said, sounding oppressed.

  “Was it bad?”

  “Suicideville. I was going to throw myself out of the window but we're only on the second floor, and from that you get skiing injuries, not a House-of-Pancake special.”

  “Maybe I better not stay,” Jane said.

  “Don't be silly, this is the way he always talks.”

  Mel took her suitcase and led her into a twin-bedded room.

  “Seriously, Jane, I insist. Here, you've got everything—privacy, your own John, black-and-white TV, Muzak when the going gets rough.”

  “What about you and Conlon?”

  “We're next door in the music room,” he said, winking crudely.

  She now realized that Conlon's advice was less than reliable. It seemed inconceivable that she could get involved with this small-time shyster stock promoter. The trivial glamor of a married man? Was that it? It dawned on her that she chronically overestimated Conlon, people. Nothing, it now appeared, could kill the vague though concealed optimism that surfaced from her character. She wanted to believe in her parents, not to mention the men she'd slept with; knew that she shouldn't, but invariably did. Maybe someday it would disappear and she'd emerge a new, stronger woman with no illusions; incapable of hope; dead, of course, but free from the possibility of disappointment

  She smiled at him; his brash exterior receded and there seemed to be something positively soft about him.

  When she was a girl, the likes of Mel or a Charles Luckmunn wouldn't have got as far as the front door. Jane's mother would have said with perfect candor: “They aren't our kind of people,” and no one would have disagreed. Argument closed. But perhaps it was the very exclusion of new blood that had turned Nancy into an irrational drinker who spent part of each year drying out. Inbreeding, although sound for horses and dogs, didn't work quite so well with human beings, and it was precisely this desire to escape from her family's social confines which, with the advent of Jane's seventeenth birthday, had forced her to search democratically, among bellhops, country-club waiters, beachboys, and Alan Sawyer, whom she did not want to marry. She had discovered that she enjoyed making love, particularly with strangers, after a string of prep-school boys and young college boys had amply demonstrated how little they knew. She was loose, selective, but unambitious, requiring neither extended liaisons nor marriage; but by the same token she was not a mark or freak. In fact, she had no intention of getting married.

  She took a shower, then stretched out on the bed, studying the instruction card that enabled guests to dial the world without going through the hotel switchboard. She phoned her home and a man's voice said:

  “Hello ... who's speaking?”

  “I'd like to talk to Mrs. Siddley.”

  “She's a little busy now.”

  Luckmunn was mildly indisposed on this visit to Nancy's bedroom. Her collection of antique snuffboxes had caught his fancy, and he wondered if, for purposes of social advancement, he should begin to collect them.

  “Tell her it's her daughter.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “Who're you, please?”

  “I'm a friend of the family. My name's Charles Luckmunn.”

  “How come you're answering the phone? Where are the servants?”

  There was a long coughing pause as Luckmunn gathered his wits. The phone was in Nancy's bedroom and this was her private line.

  “Your mother slipped and sprained her ankle playing tennis, and I had to help her upstairs.”

  “Is she in bed?”

  “She's soaking her foot in the bath.”

  “Can she come to the phone?”

  “I'll just call her. Would you hold on for a minute.”

  “It was a good thing you were around when she had her accident.”

  Sensitive to irony, Luckmunn paused.

  “I guess it was,” he said.

  A hand was placed over the receiver and Jane heard a voice saying, “I don't want to speak to anyone,” followed by, “It's your daughter.”

  At the other end, Luckmunn became agitated, paced the room, studied his naked body in the Regency mirror. Idiotic to have given his name. Would being cited as co-respondent in a divorce action improve his image? Probably not. His neighbors would assume he'd been careless and stupid, his notoriety equivalent to that of an airline's millionth passenger. The honor, he reflected, would not be accompanied by free appliances but a subpoena. If only the experience had been something mysterious like moral turpitude, with several women of different races coaxing his muscular body to respond to subtle perversions, he might have found a rationalization for identifying himself. His stars had imposed Nancy Teller Siddley on him, an old bag with lots of names, money coming out of her ears, and the appetites of a marine. Nancy emerged from the bathroom, fresh from a trip to the bidet. She patted Luckmunn's backside affectionately and then picked up the phone. He waited for her to begin speaking before slipping into his jockey shorts, effecting his escape by cover of conversation. He'd be more secure in his trousers when he told her the time had come for him to pull out.

  “Jane, honey, how are you?” Nancy's singsong contralto, a martini away from oblivion, came through to Jane.

  Luckmunn slipped into his Keds, despite Nancy's frantic hand waving. A woman who douched and drank could simply not be trusted. She moved to the door, the long telephone wire trailing on the floor, and locked it. Clothed, he was still a prisoner.

  “Never sell an oversexed woman short,” he mumbled to himself.

  Nancy now had an opportunity to concentrate on her daughter.

  “Jane, is anything wrong?”

  “I'm in New York.”

  “That's marvelous. I can meet you for dinner if you like.”

  “I'm busy. But I want to see you.”

  “Whenever you're free. Where are you staying?”

  “With some friends of Conlon's.”

  “Well, be careful.”

  “Why, Mother?”

  “All that rape going on,” she said, like someone denied the privilege.

  “Oh, come on.”

  “Do you want to do the stores with me or would you prefer coming home? Your father's in Napa. Near San Francisco.”

  “Where is he staying?”

  “I've got it written down somewhere. I'll give you the address tomorrow.”

  “Okay.”

  There was a silence and Nancy used it to flash menacing signs at Luckmunn, who virtuously ignored her, his attention squandered on a Messen vase.

  “Jane, you sound funny.”

  “Who's Charles Luckmunn, Mother?”

  “A neighbor I play tennis with.”

  Luckmunn's ears perked up at this reference. The alibi sounded so convincing that for a moment he believed it himself. Off the hook, he smiled magnanimously at Nancy. To his dying day, he'd deny to a skeptical world that their relationship had been anything more than mixed doubles.

  “Listen, Jane, I'd really rather meet you in the city,” Nancy continued. “Bonwit's has all sorts of new things.”

  “I'll call you in the morning. Is it throbbing, Mother?”

  “What?”

  “Your ankle.”

  “It'll pass,” she said, gritting her teeth, for Luckmunn had p
assed her a note printed in a child's block letters: “the key or i'll kick it in.”

  Her voice had a plaintive note when she said good-bye, and she replaced the receiver slowly in the hope of avoiding a confrontation, prolonging his departure.

  “Now don't faint on me,” he said. “You did that last month and I know how forgetful you are. The bar's open, your doctor's number is under Doctor....”

  “What brought this on?”

  “Your daughter knows.”

  “Impossible.”

  “You think everyone's so damned stupid. Okay, servants you can buy off to forget, or get new ones.” He scratched his chest. Angry, he always itched.

  “Jim couldn't care less.”

  “Nancy, this started off as a joke.”

  “I want to marry you, Charles.”

  “I'll mention that to my mother when I see her.”

  “Why the sarcasm?”

  She tensed her body so that the crater of flab wouldn't be quite so noticeable, but of course he noticed, stared coldly at the sagging breasts.

  “I'm ten years younger. And the rest,” he added. “You'd have a better chance adopting me than marrying me.”

  She would have liked to have behaved with dignity, but the quality was far too expensive. Luckmunn had filled her life for several months and the prospect of doing without him simply hurt too much.

  “I'm no gentleman, I'm not this and I'm not that. I've listened to that crap since I met you. What's there to hold on to?”

  “I'm lonely, Charles, and you know it.”

  “Hire a companion. You can afford it. I'm walking.”

  “I'll stop drinking ... taper off.”

  At this he laughed, not unkindly, but the suggestion was as zany as a Marx Brothers’ gag.

  “You've got an affinity for drinking. It's like a Nazi seeing a Jew. He wants to kill him. A natural instinct.”

  Hopeless in combat, she stalled for time, asked him to reconsider.

  “Nancy, only one thing's prevented me from being a gentleman. You.”

  “Did I ever make you happy?” she asked.

  He took the key from her, kissed her on the forehead and she held onto his hand.

  “Yes, you did. But not often enough.”

  * * * *

  It was the kind of party that Mel liked best. Fellow brokers and wheeler-dealers from other over-the-counter brokerage houses, sprinkled with pretty secretaries drinking on empty stomachs who, for the price of dinner, would be happy to accommodate any of the out-of-town businessmen. Mel's guest list was as large as his credit would permit.

  The guest of honor was already on the road to insolvency; Mel had taken the Health Company of America public that afternoon. A few points had been tacked on the price, and Al Salkind was walking around like he owned America. He was chairman of the board and chief executive officer; his wife, Sylvia, was vice-president; his brother-in-law, Hy, treasurer; and his sister-in-law, Mildred, secretary. All in all, a family affair, everybody counting money they didn't have, planning cruises (outside cabins this time), and flirting with a future that included Riva speedboats, Europe, ringside tables at Caesar's Palace when Sinatra headlined, and headwaiters who wrapped an arm around them and called them by their first names. Al even had delusions of having his nonentity enshrined in a gossip column: “Which wealthy healthy tycoon was seen at Le Club with Broadway's newest chestiest singing star?” He'd have to find out the address of Le Club for openers if he was supposed to be dancing there. Sylvia could accuse him all she liked, the column hadn't identified him.

  Neatly but, unfortunately, not inconspicuously tucked in a corner with a group of secretaries passionately discussing the ever-uninspired topic of their bosses’ advances, Jane stood quietly by, mysterious and sensual like the inside of a melon, thinking of Charles Luckmunn—who, as many before him, represented the exquisite frivolity of Nancy's despair. In Nancy's hands, lovemaking took on the uncertainty of medieval torture. The solution to her problem simply a divorce....

  Mel stormed through the girls and someone spilled a drink on one of them, an occasion for general laughter. He led a reeling Al Salkind along with him. They stopped in front of Jane. Salkind had the physique of a buffalo, humped shoulders, and a peeling red face from an overdose of sun-ray lamp. Jane reluctantly extended her hand. There seemed no way, short of jumping from the window behind her, to avoid an introduction.

  “The pleasure is mine,” Al said.

  “I haven't met her either,” the eagle-eyed Sylvia announced, thrusting herself between them. Despite her title of vice-president, she had nonvoting stock, and after twenty years with Al she wasn't going to let him gallivant off with a pisher with big tits. “I'm Sylvia Salkind,” she said, because Al was holding Jane's hand that dangerous second too long.

  “Hello,” Jane replied, wondering what she was doing there in the first place.

  At cocktail parties, Sylvia flew low, a human U-2, scanning all cleavages in the room to be sure that her husband's hand was not playfully located in any of them.

  Drinks were offered by a brawny man who carried a tray with a somewhat uncertain tilt, and Mel took the opportunity to whisper to Al:

  “Her family is Invictor and Jane's the biggest stockholder.”

  “Invictor from the big board?” asked the startled chairman.

  “Is there any other?”

  “That's big numbers,” Al said, adjusting his ascot.

  “What do you think, I have nobodies at my place?” Mel demanded.

  Jane drifted away from them and looked around for Conlon, a haven, when she saw Al stumble past his wife, in a perfectly executed cocktail-party draw play. Jane pushed herself into a corner of the bar.

  The waiter informed her that she was blocking the service entry. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a square face and broken nose that gave him a somewhat fierce look, out of keeping with his soft voice.

  “Hey, you look familiar,” Al said, placing his glass down on the bar.

  “What're you drinkin'?” the waiter asked.

  “Dewar's with a twist.” He turned to Jane. “I never forget a face and this waiter looks like somebody I've seen.”

  “Miss?” the waiter asked.

  “Vodka and tonic.” Jane too looked at the man. She hadn't ever seen him before.

  “So what's the mystery?” Al persisted.

  “I'm just a waiter, Mister.”

  “Were you always a waiter?”

  The man reddened and Jane watched him turn away slowly as he poured the tonic.

  “Why don't you leave him alone,” Jane said.

  “It's on the tip of my tongue,” Al continued. “This man's an athlete.” He turned his attention back to the waiter who was lining up drinks on a tray. “Sonny ...? You were too young, Jane, to remember. Come on help me, Sonny. It is Sonny, isn't it?”

  “Why don't you just...”

  “Sonny Jackson, of course. Hope you handle a tray better than a football, Sonny.”

  Sonny smiled and Jane could see that smiling was a very expensive emotion for him.

  “You were on the Birmingham Colonials. I saw you against the Giants. One of your good afternoons.”

  “Can I get through, please?” he asked Jane.

  She moved closer to Al to let him pass.

  “I don't understand these ex-players,” Al said. “Who do they think they are?”

  “Children.”

  “That's a very clever statement. Jane, how come you're here tonight? Friend of Mel's?”

  “No, my roommate is.”

  He clenched her wrist and moved his mouth to her neck, but she twisted away.

  “Kid with the freckles?”

  “I think your wife's looking for you.”

  “Let her look. I spend my life trying to get out of her line of vision.”

  She managed to signal Conlon who fought her way through the crowd.

  “Our guest of honor, the distinguished, brilliant Mr. Salkind,” Conlon said.r />
  “How do I lose him?” Jane whispered.

  “I'll stall him,” she said, allowing Jane to dart to the other end of the suite.

  She never enjoyed cocktail parties, always feeling vaguely menaced by men in a hurry to extract promises, arrange lunches in out-of-the-way suburban French restaurants. The married men unceasingly persistent, the singles short on conversation, long on promises, and impatient, since the possibility of missing a willing girl just around the alcove haunted them, and they all had this habit of staring over a girl's head while delivering a spiel on the advantages they above all had to offer. Another date, another orgasm, that's all it really amounted to. From childhood she remembered the cheap glamor, never elegance, that all these parties aspired to. Like the common cold, they were incurable and always the same. At the more advanced parties nowadays a group smoked grass and tittered; but that didn't make it any different, only noisier.

  Sonny was emptying ashtrays on his tray and he avoided looking at Jane, who sat down on the edge of a sofa. She motioned him with her glass.

  “Vodka and tonic, wasn't it?”

  “He embarrassed you.”

  “I'm used to it. I always catch one like him when I work a party.”

  He waited awkwardly for her glass.

  “Do you do this full-time?”

  “No, couple of times a week to pick up a little extra.”

  “I don't want another drink.”

  He wandered off to a group of men anxiously waving their glasses. It was a peculiar, irrational sensation, but she liked him instinctively, perhaps because he hadn't been able to defend himself. She hadn't felt anything for Alan Sawyer. Their sex had been effective but impersonal and no one was really to blame for the absence of feeling. It was simply expediency and she realized that if she hadn't been going to bed with Alan, it would have been somebody else close at hand. She'd never been in love and the thought didn't depress her. Sooner or later she'd meet a man, or was it men nowadays, since marriage had been officially declared a disaster area? What she didn't want to do was take anything on trust, because she hadn't met anyone whose experience or advice was worth respecting. What imagination she had was firmly rooted in reality.

  “You're coming out to dinner with us after this,” Mel informed her.