Chapter 4
Larry shifted on the stiff sofa outside the dining room of the Downtown Law Club, and shivering, slipped his hands under his pocket flaps. He hated this morgue and remembered that Bemrose had joined because Judge Haynes used to like the codfish cakes they served on Friday.
A burdened coat rack which crowded the small entrance hall hung over Larry. He walked to the window, watching the wet March snow take on the gray of the skyscrapers as it flurried ineffectually and blew to the ground. The tail end of March, and time for Arthur Bemrose to terminate his winter’s hibernation. Larry knew that he couldn’t have been solidly busy for two months, but he was too busy to see anyone. Always just leaving when Larry offered to drop around at the office. Too busy to play poker with the gang. Over the phone he had grown sharper, shorter. Before Larry could invite him to lunch the other day, Bemrose snapped him off. If that’s how it was, if he thought he could get away from whatever was bothering him by isolating himself— It didn’t make sense. When a man was miserable and had a friend he could talk to——
Larry paced the hall to the gilded iron door of the elevator. The old car crept inch by inch up the shaft as though conquering an Alp. Watching it, Larry wondered why Bemrose had phoned him this morning after all the weeks of silence. “Have lunch with me at the Downtown Club, I’m bringing a girl.” That’s all he had said.
Larry never could stand waiting. Especially here. Not just because many of the lawyers who belonged to the club had more clients than he did. It was the stuffiness. He took a breath, but didn’t get any air in his lungs. It must feel like that in a submarine.
The elevator door creaked open, and Janice Baldwin stepped out with Bemrose. Her sharply tailored suit of gray wool, the gray cap that hugged her head and hemmed her straight hair, produced a trimness Larry wouldn’t have associated with the rounded evening Janice. Only the generous mouth linked daytime and evening editions, the widely spread mouth and shiny black chips of eyes. They brightened the dim hall.
Shifting a bulky pouch bag to the other arm, she thrust her hand toward him. It was a sharp, compact weapon. “You must be Larry Frank.”
Arthur grunted a greeting and handed his coat to the check girl. Larry asked Miss Baldwin if she would like to leave her overshoes, and as she bent down to tug at the zippers, she seemed suspicious of his solicitude.
Bemrose’s tweedy heft preceded them to the dining room, and Larry began to be glad he was along, deciding her trim five feet three inches needed support if Bemrose began to throw his weight around.
At the table Larry waited for him to help Miss Baldwin out of her coat, but he searched the menu and let her struggle alone. Self-consciously Larry picked up his napkin and examined the dingy silver. At last he leaned over and helped her free the sleeves of her suitcoat from her snug woolen blouse.
“Your public,” Bemrose said irritably.
“Nice public.” She grinned at Larry and rattled the shiny amethyst links on her arm. The pert head, angled in his direction, excluded Bemrose.
Shifting his chair slightly, Larry disengaged her attention. He looked beyond the row of tables that hugged the wall. The snow, now turned to sleet, slapped peevishly against the glass. March was laughing up its sleeve in a last spurt of vengeance before the soft arrival of spring. Larry looked at Janice Baldwin, and her sense of being superlatively, glowingly alive retrieved him from the dirty dullness outdoors.
When Bemrose shoved the menu toward her, she passed it on to Larry. “You order for me,” she said sweetly.
Uneasily he turned to Bemrose. “You know what’s good here on Friday,” he said. “Scallops? Bluefish? How about some codfish cakes?”
Janice Baldwin was a study of contrived blankness, and Arthur said gruffly, “I’m having the fishcakes.”
“Is that all right with you?” Larry realized that she had succeeded in making him responsible for her. The two of them against Bemrose. That seemed to be the way she wanted them teamed up.
“Does he always decide what people should eat?” she wanted to know.
“Now——”
“He’s your friend. Ask him what I’ve done,” she said. “He nearly bit my head off when I met him downstairs a few minutes ago. And I didn’t keep him waiting, I was there right on time.”
The garrulous ears darkened. “It’s not your fault,” Bemrose admitted. “I should know better than to make a lunch date. All morning I’ve been in a jam, the usual jam. This time it’s the bill I drafted for Newton. The House Committee doesn’t seem to want it, and Newton insists that I come down to Washington and meet with them. I know they’re making a mistake. They should let it go to the Senate as is, then make their changes when it comes back to them, but they’re not going to listen to me. People only listen when it costs them more than they can afford.”
The statement contradicted Bemrose’s recent policy of not charging his clients, but Larry let it ride. He turned to Miss Baldwin. “Arthur likes things to go right the first time. Usually he doesn’t need more than one try.”
“And he sulks when they don’t go right.”
“Do you remember in our second year at school you got mad because the Law Review turned down an article you wrote?” Larry asked Bemrose. “I can still remember the subject. It was ‘Decisions.’ You were so put out when the article was returned that you quit studying for about two weeks. For you, that was like going on a hunger strike. We went to the movies every night. We saw about fourteen B pictures.” Larry’s chuckle came out easily from the bottom of his vest.
“Twenty-eight, you mean. Every show was a double feature.”
“That was when you almost decided to give up the law, wasn’t it?” Larry asked.
Bemrose bungled a smile. “Too bad I didn’t before my emotions were involved. Sometimes I envy the fellows who hate their jobs, the clock watchers. They don’t care whether things go right or wrong. They go home and forget about it, and they never get ulcers.”
“Like me. I’ll never have ulcers, or any of the other tension diseases people get from worrying,” Larry said. He turned to Miss Baldwin. “I like what you’ve been writing about England. I get a lot out of the way you say it. Over here, people like me still have no idea——”
Her hair fell forward, screening her face. She stroked the cabochons of her bracelet and talked down at the tablecloth. “I feel it. All my friends over there have been bombed out. It’s the only thing I seem to want to write about. I’d like to make everyone feel it. We’re sitting on dynamite over here, but we don’t know enough to get off. If there were only some way, short of bombing, that would make us feel the urgency— If a writer had the power and could show us that it’s close to our last chance——”
“You’ll be going back, I suppose,” Larry said. It was inconceivable that Janice Baldwin would sit out the War comfortably in New York.
“The British Consulate has promised to arrange transportation for me in a month. They phoned yesterday.” Without turning her head, the eyes moved sideways toward Bemrose.
His knife dropped and hit the table. “I thought you told me——”
“I said if I could do it without upsetting Everett’s schedule. You know I promised Pat. You were right there.”
“Naturally she wants you to go. That’s how an agent collects ten percent. Miss Baldwin is always letting her agent railroad her into jobs she doesn’t want,” Bemrose complained to Larry.
“If you wanted me to stay here, you should have said so the other night.” Janice’s eyes were bright and bitter, like a quinine-loaded wine.
“I heard you tell Pat there wasn’t any new material over there. You had already covered the story, and five hundred other reporters were hanging around the British Isles for a news break. I thought you asked her to get you out of it,” Bemrose said.
“The other night I may have felt that way.”
“You’d think she would be satisfied to stay in this country and pay attention to her job. She’s always going places,” he grumbled.
“But it is my job,” Janice Baldwin objected. “He doesn’t understand that I’d like to sit home and do it, but I have to look at what’s going on, not just read about it. That’s my particular gix. It’s the only way I can work, being there on the spot and seeing things happen.” She appealed to Larry. “Maybe other people can absorb it from the newspapers, but I have to be on hand and see it myself. I was trained that way. I’m an old time reporter. I always will be——”
“On the fly, going somewhere every minute. I don’t see how she accomplishes anything. A person ought to have a base.” Bemrose’s mustache jerked in a light staccato.
“For a man who thinks he’s anchored, you seem to spend most of your time on trains,” she said crossly.
“I wanted to get back in time to go with you Wednesday night. At the last minute Newton asked me to meet him on the hill. That’s practically a command. I had every intention——”
They had been over it before. Her pat on his hand said skip it.
She left Bemrose alone with the back of her head and turned toward Larry. “Tell me more about him at law school.” In a voice that dripped apple blossoms.
Larry tried to warn her. This was no time. Not when Bemrose was strung up like a radio aerial.
The waiter arrived with their order, and the thick dishes clattering on his aluminum tray drowned out Janice Baldwin. They settled down to the fishcakes, Arthur jabbing his angrily.
“At law school did you all know he would be good?” she asked after a few minutes.
Larry tucked his left hand into his trouser pocket while he ate with the right. “Sure. We tried to tell him so, but he kept on working. The way he worked, you’d think he was going to flunk out. Night after night he’d grind, except the one time he got upset about the Law Review turning down his article.”
“What did you think he should be doing?”
“Playing poker with us. What do you think?” Larry laughed. “You see law school wasn’t enough. Not for Arthur. He got himself a job after class clerking in a law office downtown.”
Silently Bemrose remashed his potatoes.
“Didn’t you try to talk him out of working like that? It couldn’t have been good for him.”
Larry put both hands in his pockets and moved his chair back from the table. “We were scared of him. He was better than we were, and we all knew it. I guess we resented him, but we didn’t dare interfere. It would have been like trying to stop a tornado. You know it’s going to change the shape of almost everything that is in its path, but the force is too great. You don’t dare try and stop it.”
She nodded, letting her food turn cold.
Her tense listening acted like caffeine. Not that Larry needed any special stimulant to talk about Arthur H. Bemrose. What he was saying seemed to make sense, although it had taken time and perspective to understand. It was strange lately—Tim Hoxter, the Daughertys, other people pumping him about Bemrose—a sign, maybe, that Arthur was becoming famous.
“So he scared you and the rest of the boys. You didn’t know what he was about, but you respected it. Or is respect the word?” She searched Larry’s face. “You were afraid of it. It was stronger than you. You didn’t know whether it was good or destructive, but you felt its strength.”
“Why not hold it until the morning they print my obituary? Then you can do a real job,” Bemrose interrupted. “Let’s order some dessert and get out of here.”
Larry turned to Janice Baldwin. “All I can tell you is that we would have given a right eye to be as smart as Bemrose.”
“What’s so goddam wonderful about being able to use your head? You were all exposed to an education, and an expensive education. If any of you had wanted to work—” Bemrose threw the words bitterly at Larry.
Larry had been feeling sorry for Bemrose because he was in a jam with the Baldwin girl, but now anger shot through him like strong whiskey. His neck protruded with it, and sweat stood out on his forehead. He tightened his fists until his finger joints hurt.
Larry pushed back his chair. “I have some time-killing to do for a client uptown,” he said, rising. “Nice to have met you, Miss Baldwin. I’ve admired your work. I wanted to ask you about the War.”
“Hold on, you haven’t had your coffee or dessert.” Bemrose violently motioned to a waiter.
“I’ve had dessert,” Larry said. “Don’t bother.”
“Please.” Janice Baldwin put her hand on his sleeve. “It was my fault. I was upset because he spoiled our plans the other night, and he was just getting even.” Her eyes turned spaniel-soft toward his. “Stay, Larry.”
It warmed him to hear her call him Larry. It warmed him to look at her cheeks which were the red of a pomegranate, and to see her moist black eyes directed toward him.
“Another time,” he said. “They’re expecting me back at the office.”
“Please—” Her intensity told him that she understood how deep the cut went.
Larry felt sorry for her. A woman who, in a few minutes, had managed to mess up a good, solid thing that had gone on for years between two men. And without intending any harm. Bemrose had maneuvered her into an unpretty position, and she apparently understood the implications, every shading and counter-rhythm.
“All right.” He pulled back the chair as if to change his mind.
“Larry knows what he has to do.” Bemrose held to his fluke advantage, anxious to prove that she was to blame. “I’ll be seeing you, fellow,” he said, motioning to Larry as if it were a little matter they could straighten out in five minutes alone, when there were no women around intent on Creating a situation.
Larry left the table, and she turned on Bemrose. As Larry reached the entrance hall, the high frequencies grew fainter, but he heard her say, “I didn’t— A decent, considerate guy. It’s your unspeakable arrogance——”
Larry waited for the check girl to locate his coat, and glancing back to the dining room, saw Bemrose take over. The ears were red all the way across the room, and his upper lip must have had St. Vitus’s dance. Janice Baldwin’s hanging black hair kept time with each arbitrary phrase as he instructed her in how to treat his friends.
A dull pain spanned Larry’s forehead as he stepped into the creaky car. He rubbed, but the nagging ache persisted. When would Bemrose be bright enough to find out that wasn’t the way to handle a woman? Anyway not Janice Baldwin. When would he learn to care enough for Janice Baldwin or any other woman to want to find out?