Don't Rely on Gemini (8 page)

Dru was asleep when Archie came in; and Saturday morning, before she could ask him what Liddy had wanted, Neal Dana called.

“You're coming out today, aren't you?” he said. “This is Dr. Dana.”

“We'll be there around noon, if that suits you.”

“I think I've been pompous ass!” he said. “Why don't you and your husband postpone your visit until the cocktail hour? Around five-thirty?”

“We'd love to,” Dru told him.

“Mrs. Dana is still away, but maybe we can all go out to dinner later anyway.”

She said, “My husband's in the shower now, but I'm sure he'd like that very much. So would I,” she added, feeling suddenly very sorry for Neal Dana.

Did he have any suspicions about his wife?

If he didn't, wasn't it wrong somehow to return the bag with the letters and diary inside, after Archie had told him of the bag's existence?

Because of Dru and Archie, he would have learned of his wife's infidelity; how would they set with him after that?

Neal Dana said, “I'll be looking for you, Mrs. Gamble.”

“Call me Dru,” she said.

She made a decision. The diary, the letters, were not going with them. She heard Archie singing “Addio alla madre” in the bathroom.

She went across the room to remove the evidence from the Pan Am bag, in which she had replaced it the night before. But the nightgown, the swim suit, the slippers? Leave them. The bag had to contain something.

“Are all the towels in the wash?” Dru jumped at the sound of his voice. Archie came dripping across the living room. “What's that you're reading?” he wanted to know.

Saturday afternoon Neal made himself a stiff gin and tonic before he telephoned Margaret's mother. Mrs. Kelly lived alone in a farmhouse outside Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

“Hi, Mrs. K.! How're you?”

“Neal? I'm all right. Where are you?”

“In Grandview.”

“What's the matter?”

“Everything's fine … Is Margaret there?”

“Here? Why would Margaret be here?”

He said, “To tell the truth, Mrs. K., we had a small disagreement.” He was reminded of his own observation about the phrase, “To tell the truth.” People who used it habitually, habitually concealed the truth.

Mrs. Kelly said, “Margaret wouldn't pack up and leave over a small disagreement.”

“She didn't pack,” Neal said. “If she did, she didn't take much. I thought she might have run over to Bucks County for a few days.”

“Did she take her car?”

“No, she couldn't; it wasn't here.”

“Then how was she supposed to run over to see me?”

Neal said, “I thought she'd take the bus to New York, the train to Trenton, and have you meet her there, just as she did three years ago.”

He took a swallow of his drink and watched a tanker glide through the blue waters of the Hudson. He felt a sudden wave of envy as he noticed the men on deck leaning lazily on the rail; he imagined the simplicity of such a transient existence and the easy camaraderie in a world away from women.

Mrs. Kelly said, “Are things as bad between you two as they were three years ago?”

“Not anything like that,” Neal said. “We had a silly argument. CBS is doing a special about astrology. They were advertising for people born at a certain time, and my birthdate matched one they listed. Margaret sent in my name without telling me, and I lost my temper.”

“I don't blame you, Neal,” Mrs. Kelly said. “She's too involved in that nonsense.”

Neal said, “This writer and his wife came here from New York Wednesday night. Margaret didn't tell me anything about it until the last minute. I refused to have anything to do with them. She was too embarrassed to face them, and she became hysterical, so I told them she wasn't home and got rid of them.” He chuckled. “Or at least I thought I'd gotten rid of them. They had an accident on the hill. I had to lend them Margaret's car so they could get back to New York. She was damned angry over that.”

“She had no right to be,” said Mrs. Kelly. “It was her fault they came up that hill in the first place.”

“She was furious just the same. She said, ‘Now you've fixed it so I can't go anyplace. We'll see about that!' “

“What did she do?” Mrs. Kelly said.

“Nothing Wednesday night. She slept in the guest room, she was so teed off. I had an early appointment Thursday, and I didn't bother going in to wake her up. When I came home from work that night, she was gone.”

“No note?” “Nothing.”

Mrs. Kelly said, “If you want my opinion, Neal, she's trying to worry you sick, to get even with you … She's not here.” He said, “Are you sure?” “I promise. She's not here.” “I don't know where she could be, then.” “Neal?” “What?”

“Do you have some gin and vermouth?” “Sure.”

“You go and crack some ice and make yourself a nice dry martini. Sit back and enjoy it. Have a second one when you're finished, and another one after that. She can just go to the dickens! Don't you worry about her.”

Neal said, “But she's been gone for two and a half days!”

“Let her stay away a whole month! She'll come back. She did the last time, and she will this time.”

“This isn't like the last time, Mrs. K.,” said Neal. “Everything's fine between us.”

“It could have been three years ago, too, if she hadn't been so stubborn. She's a very selfish girl, Neal!”

“I don't know,” said Neal. “Maybe I was too bullheaded. It wouldn't have hurt me to talk with those people from New York. In fact, I invited them out for drinks tonight.”

“You're playing right into her hands,” said Madeline Kelly. “Oh, she always gets her own way;
always.”

Neal said, “If you hear from her, will you tell her that I've asked the Gambles for drinks?”

She sighed disapprovingly. “All right, dear. But she doesn't deserve you. If you want my opinion, Margaret's probably staying at some expensive hotel in New York, shopping and going to the theater, while you stew!”

“I hope it's something like that,” he said.

“Oh, she's all right, Neal. She always lands on her feet.”

After Neal hung up, he put on an old record of William Kapell playing Beethoven. Then he got Sinister's worms from the refrigerator and fed him supper.

“Dov'è il consolato americano?”
Sinister said.

“Down the street,” Neal said.

“Dov'è una farmacia?”

“Right next to the American Consulate,” said Neal.

• • •

He looked forward to the Gambles' arrival. The day's depression was lifting, as it always seemed to toward evening when he made his first drink. Both Thursday and Friday night he had gotten quietly bombed up in his study, trying to work on his outline. Penny had kept their bargain and not telephoned him, though he suspected the half-dozen calls he had received since Thursday, when no one spoke, but the caller just listened to him repeat “Hello,” had been from Penny. He had promised to call her in a week. He had explained that he wanted to plan his next steps very carefully and thoroughly … just when to start mentioning to colleagues that Margaret was gone, just when to notify the police. It would be a while before Penny and he could see each other; Neal didn't look forward to it.

The worst time of all was in the early morning when he woke up. Then all of it didn't seem possible, and he would find himself futilely picking away at the thing … why Penny had gone into the house when she had seen Margaret's car in the drive, why she had remained there after she saw Margaret, why she had had to needle Margaret about being barren, why, why, why … until inevitably it came down to why Neal had ever become involved with Penny Bissel.

He went into the kitchen to refreshen his gin and tonic and put the worms back in the refrigerator. Margaret was one of those women who never overstocked groceries. They had too much of everything else, from linens to liquor, but the kitchen shelves contained little more than staples like salt and sugar and spices, and in the freezer there were only rolls.

He would have to shop. There was so much he would have to attend to now: discover the day the dry cleaner called, the laundryman; garden and make the bed, clean, pay the bills. He couldn't advertise for a housekeeper yet.

While he worked the ice cubes out of the tray he listened to the crisp, descending fanfare of the opening theme in the Beethoven concerto. Margaret had taken Neal to hear Kapell the first year they were married, when they were living in New York. Kapell had played Schubert and Liszt, and Neal had been so impressed that he had gone to Goody's the next day to buy all his records. A few years later, Margaret and Neal heard over the radio one night that Kapell had been killed in an air crash. They had put on the record which was playing now: the
Concerto No. 2 in B-Flat,
and Rachmaninoff's
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.
Tears had streamed down Margaret's cheeks as they listened.

He carried his drink into the living room and snapped off the hi-fi. There was no sense inviting melancholy. Every one of their records would remind him of some time with Margaret. He turned on the radio and found a rock station. Simon and Garfunkel were singing “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?” from their recording of “Mrs. Robinson.”

Sometimes Margaret had called him “Joe” because of his resemblance to the baseball hero. He steeled himself against continuing in that vein. Life wasn't conspiring to remind him every second of Margaret; he was doing it to himself, playing in to it. He sat down, turned off the radio, and tried to think about his book, concentrating on the ideas he had gathered for the chapter on smoking mannerisms. But like a ghostly sound from some safe time when things were normal, he heard the honk of Margaret's horn as the Volkswagen made its way up the hill.

The Gambles were fifteen minutes early.

Archie Gamble sipped a Dewar's and water, sitting with his legs crossed and a hand on one knee. He was wearing black loafers and gray slacks, a light blue sports jacket the color of his eyes, a matching blue V-neck Shetland sweater under it, white shirt and black knitted tie.

“Astrologists,” he said, “believe that everything is under the influence of the planets and signs of the Zodiac: animals, plants, precious stones, cities, even the Twelve Disciples of Christ.”

“Tell Neal what sign Judas was,” said Dru Gamble. She was dressed in a brown wool suit with a yellow scarf holding back her rust-colored hair; she was sipping a martini on the rocks.

“Judas was Pisces.”

“No, Arch, he was Gemini. Your sign. Wasn't he?”

“I appreciate your confidence, Dru, but Judas was Pisces.”

“Are you sure?”

Gamble shot her a dirty look. Neal interceded. “How did they come up with Judas' birthdate?”

“They didn't. You have to remember that both Judas and astrology were around before our calendar was devised.” Gamble lit a cigarette. “The old astrologers believed that the Twelve Disciples were chosen to represent the twelve fundamental qualities. The ruling Trinity was the Sun (the Father), whose spiritual light (the Holy Spirit) was reflected by the Moon (the Son), flowing out through these dozen apostles into all of humanity, which was divided into the twelve basic types.”

Neal said, “And which disciple
was
the Gemini?” “James, ‘the lesser.' “ Gamble laughed. “Sorry about that … James was quite an eloquent preacher.”

“A flapjaw,” Dru said, “like all Geminis.”

“What was Peter?” Neal asked.

“Aries, the fiery, impulsive rock upon which the Church was founded!” Gamble answered with mock authority.

She said, “Matthew was good old Capricorn. Tax collector. Politician.”

Neal said, “Is that your sign?”

“Thanks a lot … When did you decide I was materialistic and power-crazy?”

“You wouldn't say that about Joan of Arc,” said Archie Gamble, “and she was Capricorn.”

“So's President Nixon,” Dru Gamble answered, “and Barry Goldwater and J. Edgar Hoover; thanks anyway, but I'm a Cancer.”

Neal said, “Which disciple was the Cancer?” “Dear old home-loving Andrew,” she said. “And who was the Virgo?” said Neal. “Virgo's my wife's sign.”

“Philip was.”

“Lyndon Johnson's a Virgo, too,” said Dru Gamble, “and so is Greta Garbo … hey, I'm getting good. I think I'll set up shop and give Mrs. Muckermann some competition.”

“As if astrology didn't suffer from enough ill repute,” Gamble said. “But let's hear more from my ‘astro-twin.' What do we have in common, Neal?”

“I know one thing already,” she said.

“What's that?” Neal asked.

“Neither of you mind freezing to death. I'm
cold.”

They took their drinks from the porch and moved inside.

• • •

By eight-thirty, Neal was getting crocked and hungry. He was planning to take them into Piermont for lobster at Sbordone's, or they were planning to take him: Gamble insisted that dinner would go on his expense account. But both Gamble and his wife were nursing along the last drinks Neal had made them; Neal had the feeling they wanted him to agree to be on the show before they left the house.

Gamble was balancing one of Neal's yellow legal pads on his knee, making notes with a Pentel, while his wife stood near Sinister's cage, trying to make the parrot talk.

“He sings more than he talks,” Neal said, “but he's unusually quiet tonight.”

Eventually he would give Sinister away, but not for a long, long time. It would be an admission that he never expected to see Margaret again.

Gamble said, “Well, so far, so bad. We ought to be able to find more in common than this.” He read from a list he had made. “We're both only children. We've both been analyzed. We were both married for the first time in 1950. We're both insomniacs. We bought the same type of Constitution mirrors at auction. We both smoke Trues. We're both childless, and we've both lived in New York City most of our lives.”

“And we were both Navy,” said Neal.

“Yes, both Navy … Well, it's not very hair-raising, is it?”

Neal smiled. “Did you really think we'd have parallel lives?”

“Hell no!” said Archie. “But I said a few prayers that I'd be wrong.”

“Keep talking,” Dru Gamble said. “Maybe you'll come up with more.” Then she gave Gamble a snide look and said, “Of course, there's a certain new piece of information which we might include. Archie just found out about it last night.”