White Jade. V. J. Banis

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СКАЧАТЬ it end. Don’t let me lose him, ever.

      I laughed and rapped another key. “I suppose you’re going to tell me you met some fabulous heiress in Florida and you’ve decided I’m not up to snuff after all—a mere druggist’s daughter.”

      He kissed the back of my neck. I suddenly felt edgy.

      “Well?” I asked after a long silence.

      “Well, what?”

      “Did you meet a lot of wealthy heiresses who turned your head?” I looked over my shoulder at him. I was smiling, but there was something ominous about the mood, the tone of the conversation.

      He said, still smiling, “Only one.” He lit a cigarette and went to sit in Dad’s old chair.

      “Was she awfully pretty?”

      “In her own way.” He gave me the impression he was playing cat and mouse with me, which only upset me the more.

      “What exactly does that mean?”

      “She’s the cold, austere type. Plenty of breeding, lots of money and class and elegance. Quite beautiful, really, but not cute and pert like you.”

      “You know, all my life I’ve thought it would be nice if I were one of the beautiful ones and some of them were cute and pert.”

      He laughed and puffed on his cigarette. “You’ve nothing to be jealous of, little one.”

      “Who was she?”

      “Who? Oh, the heiress. Mary Morgan. New York family, in glass. You’ve probably heard of it—Morgan Glassware.”

      “And I suppose you thought of marrying her for her money,” I said with a giggle.

      “Yes, I did,” and he laughed too.

      * * * *

      It was about a month after that when I learned the truth. Until then, except for that conversation with its worrisome overtones, I had not even a clue that anything was amiss. Jeff had seen a little less of me, it was true, but that had been credited to some new responsibilities at his job.

      It wasn’t an awfully good job, with an advertising firm. He wanted to be an actor, but the parts had been few and far between. We had talked it over and agreed that the advertising firm had possibilities, and if he worked hard there might be some future in it. So I could hardly complain if he devoted a lot of his evenings and even some of his weekends to work.

      My father had never been very good at keeping things from me, so I knew when I came in on that particular evening that something was odd. He was much too solicitous.

      “Snappy out there,” he said, jumping up from his chair to give me a hand with my coat, for which I gave him a curious look. “Better sit down and get warm. Why don’t you let me fix you some tea?”

      “No, don’t fuss, please.” I gave his shoulder an affectionate pat. He had only gotten out of bed a week before, after a particularly bad spell. “I’ll get it myself. You sit and relax, all right?”

      I thought I would wait and see if he brought up whatever it was that he had on his mind. If not, I would broach it for him. It came up sooner than I had expected, however.

      “Where’s the newspaper?” I asked, coming back into the living room a few minutes later with my tea.

      “The paper?” he looked so confused by that question that I knew something was definitely wrong. “It doesn’t seem to be here, does it? Could I have thrown it out with the trash? Let me think....”

      “Dad it’s no use,” I said, smiling. “You may as well come clean and tell me whatever it is you’re trying to hide. You know I’ll get it out of you anyway.”

      He looked sheepish. “Chris,” he said, and then couldn’t bring himself to say whatever it was. He got up and went into his room, and came back a moment later with the evening paper.

      Until now I had been mostly amused, but as he handed me the paper, I had a presentiment of what I was going to learn. The paper was open to the society page. How on earth he had even come across the announcement I couldn’t guess, since he was not given to reading the society columns. Something must have caught his eye as he turned through the section.

      I truly had not given any thought to Jeff’s beautiful heiress since that one conversation, but I recognized the name at once” “Mary Morgan to Wed,” the headline announced. I suppose I knew without reading further who the bridegroom was going to be. I was less surprised than I would have expected to be.

      I never saw him again until that unsettling meeting in Elsinore. At first, because I was young and in love and thought the world ought to accommodate itself to that fact, I refused to accept it as the truth. I waited, thinking he would call and assure me it had been some awful silly mistake.

      He didn’t call, and I went through another stage in which I railed and swore how much I hated him, and avoided the truth in my father’s eyes. I would never speak to him again, I vowed. He could come back, begging for forgiveness, and I would spit on him.

      In the end, hating myself for the humiliation I was subjecting myself to, I went to him. Or at least I tried to. I went to his apartment. I rang the bell and listened, positive I heard him inside. I knocked and I cried and I called his name until the blowsy woman who lived next door came out to investigate the ruckus.

      If he was there, inside, he never opened the door, any more than he answered the phone, or replied to my letters, letters that were increasingly desperate, increasingly shameless.

      I don’t know what cruel sense of humor, what perverse emotion, brought him to send me an invitation to his wedding. I often wondered afterward how he explained my name on the list. Even more heartbreaking, I wondered how he had intended to introduce me to his bride if I had been so bold as to show up.

      But of course I did not. He had known I would never come. He had always known, better than I, just what I would do.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      It was evening when I came through the vaulted waiting room at Grand Central and out into the cold air again. There was no snow falling here. It was a chilly autumn evening. The raucous after-work traffic had begun to thin.

      Ordinarily I would take the subway home, but I was tired from the long trip and from the strain of anxiety. I got into a cab and gave the driver the address of my little apartment in the village.

      The city that should have been familiar to me appeared jangled and strangely alien. I had a sense of disassociation that I could neither understand nor set aside. I leaned forward and said to the driver, “Take 42nd over to Eighth and down Eighth.”

      It was a slower route but there was no reason why he should mind. We inched our way through Times Square and then we were moving along Eighth Avenue.

      “Wait, stop here for a moment,” I said. He gave me a dubious look in the mirror but he pulled over to the curb.

      The drugstore was still a drugstore, its brick front recently whitewashed. I did not remember clearly the man who had bought it. He had been soft spoken and placid of expression. I had only a vague СКАЧАТЬ