Everything's Eventual

Humboldt called me again two weeks after the evening when I'd bombed West Eighty-third Street with my cigarettes, and this time he stuck with Mr. Davis as a form of address. He thanked me for the copies of various documents forwarded him through Mr. Ring and said that the time had come for "all four of us" to sit down to lunch. All four of us meant Diane. I hadn't seen her since the morning of the day she'd left, and even then I hadn't really seen her; she'd been sleeping with her face buried in her pillow. I hadn't even talked to her. My heart speeded up in my chest, and I could feel a pulse tapping away in the wrist of the hand holding the telephone.

   "There are a number of details to be worked out, and a number of pertinent arrangements to be discussed, and this seems to be the time to put that process in work," Humboldt said. He chuckled fatly in my ear, like a repulsive adult giving a child some minor treat. "It's always best to let some time pass before bringing the principals together, a little cooling-off period, but in my judgement a face-toface meeting at this time would facilitate—"

   "Let me get this straight," I said. "You're talking about—"

   "Lunch," he said. "The day after tomorrow? Can you clear that on your schedule?" Of course you can, his voice said. Just to see her again . . . to experience the slightest touch of her hand. Eh, Steve?

   "I don't have anything on for lunch Thursday anyhow, so that's not a problem. And I should bring my lawyer?"

   The fat chuckle came again, shivering in my ear like something just turned out of a Jell-O mold. "I imagine Mr. Ring would like to be included, yes."

   "Did you have a place in mind?" I wondered for a moment who would be paying for this lunch, and then had to smile at my own naiveté. I reached into my pocket for a cigarette and poked the tip of a toothpick under my thumbnail instead. I winced, brought the pick out, checked the tip for blood, saw none, and stuck it in my mouth.

   Humboldt had said something, but I had missed it. The sight of the toothpick had reminded me all over again that I was floating smokeless on the waves of the world.

   "Pardon me?"

   "I asked if you know the Gotham Café on Fifty-third Street," he said, sounding a touch impatient now. "Between Madison and Park."

   "No, but I'm sure I can find it."

   "Noon?"

   "Noon's fine," I said, and thought of telling him to tell Diane to wear the green dress with the little black speckles and the slit up the side. "I'll just check with my lawyer." It occurred to me that that was a pompous, hateful little phrase, one I couldn't wait to stop using.

   "Do that, and call me back if there's a problem."

   I called John Ring, who hemmed and hawed enough to justify his retainer (not outrageous, but considerable) and then said he supposed a meeting was in order "at this time."

   I hung up, settled back in front of my computer terminal, and wondered how I was possibly going to be able to meet Diane again without at least one cigarette beforehand.

On the morning of our scheduled lunch, John Ring called and told me he couldn't make it, and that I would have to cancel. "It's my mother," he said, sounding harried. "She fell down the damned stairs and broke her hip. Out in Babylon. I'm leaving now for Penn Station. I'll have to take the train." He spoke in the tone of a man saying he'll have to go by camel across the Gobi.

   I thought for a second, jiggling a fresh toothpick between my fingers. Two used ones lay beside my computer terminal, the ends frayed. I was going to have to watch that; it was all too easy to imagine my stomach filling up with sharp little splinterettes. The replacement of one bad habit with another seems almost inevitable, I've noticed.

   "Steven? Are you there?"

   "Yes," I said. "I'm sorry about your mother, but I'm going to keep the lunch-date."

  He sighed, and when he spoke he sounded sympathetic as well as harried. "I understand that you want to see her, and that's the reason why you have to be very careful, and make no mistakes. You're not Donald Trump and she's not Ivana, but this isn't a no-faulter we got here, either, where you get your decree by registered mail. You've done very well for yourself, Steven, especially in the last five years."

   "I know, but—"

   "And for thuhree of those years," Ring overrode me, now putting on his courtroom voice like an overcoat, "Diane Davis was not your wife, not your live-in companion, and not by any stretch of the imagination your helpmate. She was just Diane Coslaw from Pound Ridge, and she did not go before you tossing flower-petals or blowing a cornet."

   "No, but I want to see her." And what I was thinking would have driven him mad: I wanted to see if she was wearing the green dress with the black speckles, because she knew damned well it was my favorite.

   He sighed again. "I can't have this discussion, or I'm going to miss my train. There isn't another one until one-oh-one."