Into the Night

“Walter. Walter called me up. He was sore about something. I never heard him so sore before. Every time I tried to smooth his fur and say something nice to him, he’d come back at me and say, How many others do you tell that to?”

“Well, there was your out right there. Why didn’t you just hang up and get rid of him that way?”

“I was afraid to. I didn’t want to lose him altogether. Sometimes they never come back. There’s a time to get huffy and hard-to-get, and there’s a time to hold on tight.”

“Well, what about the club, can’t you duck him down there?”

“It’s Monday. We don’t have a show on Mondays.”

“Oh, I forgot.”

“He knows that, too.”

“Well, maybe it won’t be so bad,” Madeline tried to console her.

She gave a wail of anticipatory misery. “It’ll be plenty bad. He’s one of these quiet ones. I know him.”

“The surprising thing to me,” Madeline philosophized, “isn’t that it finally happened, but that it didn’t happen long ago, the parlays you’ve been playing.”

“Preaching isn’t what I need now,” Dell told her. “I need somebody here with me, I need somebody standing by me.”

“Why don’t you call the police, if you’re that afraid of him,” Madeline said with an edge of contempt in her voice.

“You don’t do that when you’ve been what we have to each other. If he ever finds out I called a girlfriend, he’d find it easy enough to forgive that. But if he ever finds out I called the police, he’d never forgive that. You don’t know the ropes, dear.”

No, Madeline thought morosely. I guess I’ve never gone down for the count as often as you have.

She had triggered the whole thing, it was developing into what promised to be a perfectly beautiful mess, and now she was being asked to step in a second time and screen the potential victim’s hide.

“You’ve got to come! You’ve got to! You’re the one friend I have in this world. Look at all I’ve done for you. My door was always open to you. Drinks on the house. I let you use my piano.”

Oh, shove your piano, Madeline thought parenthetically. An expression she had acquired from the very person she was now returning it to.

“I even got market tips from him for you. Are you going to go back on me now, when I need you?”

“Al-l-l right,” Madeline drawled reluctantly. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll call you in about an hour’s time. If he’s acting ugly and you’re finding him hard to handle, I’ll hustle on over and bring you my moral support. If everything’s under control, then you don’t need me. How’ll that be?”

She thought: Even if I get her out of it tonight, it’ll catch up with her some other night, now that the seeds of suspicion have been planted, and the second time I won’t be on hand to bail her out.

Dell almost yelped her gratitude. “Thanks, baby-honey! Oh, thanks! I knew I could count on you, I knew you wouldn’t let me down. I’ll do the same for you someday.”

Who needs you? thought Madeline scornfully. I don’t play men by the carload.

“Better than that. Y’know that stone-marten jaquette you admired, the one Ange gave me? It’s yours, I’m giving it to you right now.”

Madeline made a sound down within her throat that might have been taken for gratitude, but was actually ridicule.

“All right, I’ll take a quick tub and get dressed. Call me in an hour. Well, make it quarter past, that’ll give me more time to turn around.”

“Don’t get loaded,” Madeline warned her bluntly. “It’s important that you keep your head clear, and know what you’re doing.”

“Check,” Dell said obediently. In two months flat, Madeline had gotten the upper hand on her. And by sheer personality impact alone. For she hadn’t tried in any way, either actively or passively, to dominate her.

Six o’clock came. Now’s when I promised I’d call her, Madeline thought, and I’m not doing it.

Half past, and she still hadn’t called her. Why don’t I just let it ride? Let her take her own medicine.

At quarter of seven she finally gave in, picked up the phone. “Emerson eight, eighteen hundred.” Then when the downstairs switchboard answered, “Eighteen-A, please.”

He came back and said, “There isn’t any answer.”

At seven the same routine. “Emerson eight, eighteen hundred... Eighteen-A, please.”

“There isn’t any answer.”

At seven-fifteen, for the third time, “There isn’t any answer.”

After a moment or two of indecision, she went downstairs, outside to the street, got in a cab, and went over there to find out for herself what kind of a turn this had taken.

Dell’s doorman was busy shepherding two tailcoats, a broad-tail and an ermine, into a cab. He had his back to her, so Madeline found her way in unaided. She punched the eighteen button in the self-service elevator, the door glided closed with the softness of a purr, and she rode up.

She got out and rang the doorbell. Nobody came to the door.

She rang again, with a jab of irritation sharpening the gesture. Still nobody came. First she wets me up with her tears for help, she thought resentfully, then she clams up and ignores me. Probably they’ve reconciled, and he took her out to dinner.