Chapter IV: Part 4

Larry broke the eggs cleanly on the edge of the glass bowl, looked for an egg beater, and took down paprika, salt, and pepper. Bessie humored him on Sunday mornings and let him scramble the eggs his way, well beaten and cooked over a low fire. Patiently Larry stirred, scooping his fork along the side of the pan. The August sun blazed through the windows. Larry knew that if he wanted the eggs right, they couldn’t be rushed.

Larry opened the refrigerator and saw cool slices of honeydew melon on white Wedgwood, and an oval platter of smoked salmon in neat rows. He uncovered a top-of-the-stove oven where six shiny bagel were heating, and sniffed. Bagel were doughnut-like rolls with tough, crisp crusts. He remembered them nostalgically from home.

A container of cream was on the stove to be added at the last moment. The cream splashed, and Larry mixed the eggs again before he spooned them onto heated plates and called Bessie to help carry them in.

They ate in the foyer, where Elizabeth Brett, Bessie’s old school chum, was waiting at the table. She sampled the eggs expertly. “They’re wonderful. How do you get them so smooth?” she asked.

“He won’t even tell me,” Bessie pretended to complain.

“I wish he’d tell my cook,” Elizabeth’s flowers bobbed on her white bouquet of a hat. “Mm-m,” she sighed contentedly. “I don’t know when I last tasted a bagel.”

“You have a standing invitation any Sunday, Liz,” Larry said, grinning. He looked through the graceful arch to the living room and felt grateful to Liz, as he often had before. On this shriveling August day the dark emerald walls soaked up the heat, and the bright white fireplace with its oblong of unframed mirror fitted the serene Brett color plan. Chintz for the easy chairs. A lemon-colored sofa and striped woolen draperies. Ivy in white stands. The color was Brett, as though she had stood by, adding white to the paint and weaving it into each clean-looking fabric.

It was her color, but their home. At first Larry had been afraid to tell her about the Soyer painting, the gift last year of a client who owed him a fee. Bessie and he had thought that the somber, grayish picture of a girl with legs askew and knob knees bent might offend Liz, but she felt the power in the picture at once, said the girl in the painting looked like a high school chum in the Bronx who had lost her job during the thirties and tried to commit suicide with a rusty pair of scissors. Her school friend had the Soyer’s overlarge hollows for eyes, Liz said thoughtfully, while she searched her handbag for a picture hook to hang the painting.

Liz had made her way from a cold-water flat in the Bronx to the shop on East Fifty-seventh Street. _Elizabeth Brett, Inc., Interiors._ Bessie first met her when she was Lizzie Browarsky and they were freshmen at Hunter. Already Liz was designing her own clothes and painting sets for the dramatic club. In her junior year she quit and went to art school at night, and apprenticed herself during the day to the home furnishings section of a department store. There Liz made friends with an editor of a decorating magazine who introduced her to a society woman who was looking for someone young and energetic as a partner. The woman’s husband had gone broke on Wall Street, and she supported herself by decorating for wealthy friends. Liz, who had brains and a fresh color sense, delighted her employer’s clients, and Brett jobs began to be talked about and photographed. Friends of friends and total strangers visited the cramped upstairs office. When the business moved a year ago to a spacious street location, Liz bought out her associate, changed the firm name, and hired three assistants to handle the traffic. Liz deserved a lot of credit, Larry admitted. In fifteen years she had put herself at the top. Watching her thick-knuckled fingers on the slippery roll, Larry wondered, as he often did, how coarse-fibered Liz with her mottled strawberry skin, gossipy mouth and emphatic hips managed to get along with the airplane trade. Her own scheme of dressing was the reverse of the rooms she designed. She used too much makeup, loaded herself with gaudy costume jewelry, and on a scorcher like today, she wore a long-sleeved black crepe dress. Her voice was Bourbon, straight, she said “yeh-uh” for “yes,” and was the last person anyone would associate with the pure cool beauty of an interior by Brett.

Judged by standards of self-made success, Liz was the counterpart among Bess’s college friends of Bemrose among his. Both had come up from a curbstone. They both served wealthy clients. Only the edges of Arthur H. Bemrose were engine-turned while Liz Brett had hangnails that snagged. Her energy exploded like a hundred firecrackers set off at once while Bemrose’s was a steady glow.

They were on a second cup of coffee when Bess said, “Tell him, Liz. What you were telling me before.”

“I’ve been having a little trouble with your pal, Bemrose,” Liz said, a cigarette between her lips.

Larry struck a match for her. “Where did you tangle with him?”

“He asked me to do over his old house on Eighty-second Street.” The white hat tossed as she inhaled. “I met him at a party of a client of mine. I did a house for this woman on the Cape. He seemed like a nice guy, and I hoped there was a little something between them. When I saw that he had married another girl, I wrote, congratulating him. About a month ago he called to ask me how I’d like to do over his house.” She tilted the fragile chair and blew a smoke ring. “I should have been smart enough to know when _he_ called instead of Mrs. Bemrose----”

“Tell him about the bedroom paper,” Bessie prompted.

Larry looked curiously at his wife. The dark purple lips which usually curved with good nature twisted pouting, insistent, toward Elizabeth. Lightning threatened in her brown eyes which ordinarily were so warm and cloudless that they reminded Larry of a perfect stretch of weather. Thin lines of moisture had collected in the folds of her plump neck. Bess’s wavy dark hair which almost always obediently circled her face, accentuating its roundness, jabbed from the temples in straight, stubborn ends. The play of dark lips and blinding white teeth, a study of light-and-shadow which Larry never tired of watching, struck him now as greedy. He thought of a small, furry animal badgering its victim. This wasn’t his usual sweet, gentle Bessie.

“What _about_ the wallpaper?” he asked.

“Nothing that will make any difference in a hundred years.” Elizabeth had caught his amused tone.

“About the stripes,” Bessie persisted.

“You know the house,” Elizabeth said. “It’s a mausoleum.”

Larry nodded.

“He won’t let her get rid of the old furniture,” Liz explained. “So Mrs. Bemrose thought that by keeping the walls light and slipcovering some of the heavy pieces, she’d brighten up the place.”

“_Who_ thought of that?” Larry laughed.

“I did.”

Bessie motioned to him impatiently. “That’s what she is paid for, Larry. Go on, tell about the stripes.”

“We had agreed to use a pale blue sprig paper for the bedroom to keep it delicate,” Liz continued. “We had already selected a matching carpet and fabrics. Even samples for lamp shades. Her heart was set on that blue.”

“But he wanted stripes,” Bessie interrupted.

“Bottle green and tan stripes,” Elizabeth explained. “An inch wide. They would have been okay for the study, or in a man’s bedroom where the furniture was made to order, but----”

“She lost, I guess,” Larry said.

“She cried all the way through a good dress of mine. Scared to death that she’d never understand him. Children, it isn’t friendly at the Bemroses’. It isn’t friendly.” Elizabeth walked to the mirror and stroked her upswept coiffure with clumsy fingers.

“I guess they’ll sleep with stripes.” Larry shrugged.

“You haven’t heard about the cook,” Bessie protested.

“Let’s skip it,” Elizabeth ran a thumb along a pocket comb.

“No, he ought to hear,” Bess insisted. “To listen to Larry talk about Arthur Bemrose, you’d think he was-- Well, sometimes you do make me sick,” she said defensively.

Larry looked more reproachful than he felt. He knew Bessie was jealous of the time he spent with Arthur, but it didn’t bother him. He attributed it to feminine possessiveness and was rather flattered by her jealousy.

“What about the cook?” Larry asked, to humor Bessie. “I might as well know everything.”

“If cooks are good, they’re _usually_ a little crazy,” Elizabeth explained. “This one at the Bemroses’ makes like a genius, but he fired her because he claims she came home drunk.” Elizabeth smiled. “If she’d work for me, I’d gladly keep her in Scotch, cases of it. Anyway Mrs. Bemrose says the cook was sick, not drunk, and begged him to hang on to her, but he won, of course. Next day the cook was--” Elizabeth jerked a thumb toward the door. “I tell you, infants, it’s not friendly at the Bemroses’.”

Bessie watched apprehensively for Larry’s reaction, but he stacked the dishes unconcerned.

“Leave those. I’ll do them after Liz is gone,” Bessie said. “Don’t go yet, Liz. Tell him about the draperies.”

“Look, honey, how about letting him alone? He thinks we’re a couple of hellions.”

“Aren’t you?” Larry innocently asked.

“A thing like that shows up a man’s character,” Bess insisted. “Larry ought to know about it. For his own protection,” she added mysteriously.

“And you should get a job running a quiz program,” Liz said.

Larry pinched his nose delightedly. An embarrassed flush, rising on Bessie’s neck, colored her lower jaw.

“The other afternoon about five-thirty I was supervising the hanging of draperies for the upstairs study when Bemrose came in,” Liz continued. “He blurted out something at her and when I turned around, she was trembling. A lawyer named Harrison was waiting for him downstairs, and Bemrose had asked her to have her dinner sent up on a tray so that he and this other lawyer could be alone.

“I invited her to come home with me and look at a bedroom screen I had been trying to describe to her, thinking she might want to order one like it. Bemrose fell over himself thanking me. He can be damned ingratiating when you give him his way--”

“You bet he can. And sometimes even when you don’t give him his way,” Larry said.

“I decided he was getting off too easy, and it would do him good to suffer,” Liz said. “I asked, ‘How about inviting us downstairs for cocktails? I’ve been on my feet all day. I can use a drink.’”

She sat down and shifted her hips on the narrow chair. “Mrs. Bemrose tried to shush me and say they mustn’t be disturbed. She offered to have _our_ drink sent up. But I put my foot down and said I wanted to get away from the mess in the sitting room.

“Bemrose finally saw he was licked. He asked us to join them,” Liz continued. “When we got downstairs, he fixed a nice, smooth Martini, and he went out of his way to behave. He kept cutting us into the conversation, and his friend Harrison--he told some good stories.” She smiled speculatively. “I like that little runt.”

“Make a try for him, Liz. He’ll keep you in sables.”

“Thanks. I’ll buy my own,” Liz said. “I think Bemrose would have asked us to dinner if he hadn’t been afraid of reversing himself. Harrison was having a good time. He thought I was the life of the party. What is he? A corporation lawyer?”

Larry nodded.

“Bemrose wouldn’t let on, of course, that he wanted to change his mind,” Liz said. “It’s no _kinderspiel_, living with that guy. It takes quite a woman.”

Elizabeth removed a cylinder of red paste from her bag. She used a fingertip to spot each cheek and worked in the daubs of color. “That poor little thing had better catch on quick or----”

“He has a heart as big as he is,” Larry protested.

“He wants Larry to manage his office,” Bess said. “What do you think, Liz? You’re a judge of character. It’s a big step for Larry, closing his own office. My father says going into business with a man is like marrying him.”

Larry was grateful that Bess never reminded him he had taken her from a home with two servants. She never suggested that they wouldn’t have this apartment if her father, a successful diamond merchant, hadn’t furnished it for a wedding present. For fifteen years Bess had plugged away with Larry, counting on him to become a Judge, or at least a Magistrate, but keeping the thought in the back of a bottom drawer. Bemrose’s offer was the first real professional break he had had since law school. Since he told her about it, Bess had gone around the house absorbed, thoughtful, looking questions instead of asking them. She pretended to resent Arthur and his success, but Larry knew the firm name of HAYNES and BEMROSE was an overbright sun that watered her eyes. In the small veins of her heart, Bessie probably hoped that he would accept the offer.

“Larry’s a pretty good judge of character. He doesn’t need my advice,” Elizabeth said, walking over and affectionately tugging the knot of his tie. “Now children, I really must--” She crushed some long white gauntlets at her wrist. “The eggs were scrumptious. Ask me again!”

Before Larry could say, “I’ve already turned down his job,” Elizabeth was on her way, and the door clicked.

Gratefully Larry took off his tie, unbuttoned his collar, and stretched out on the yellow sofa, placing a newspaper under his shoes. Bessie was busy in the kitchen. He’d have to tell her someday and might just as well line up how he was going to put it. He’d have to go back a month to that stinking evening----

* * * * *

Larry would never forget that night in the middle of July. It was impossible to get a breath of air if a man had a pair of lungs like Dempsey. The gang decided they might as well forget the humidity and play poker because it was better to be out and occupied than to stifle and be bored at home. There was no point in going to an air-cooled movie, either, and come out later to the steaminess of Times Square. They set up the game at Danny’s, and griped like hell because Danny had promised every summer to put in air conditioning and hadn’t done anything about it.

Although Bemrose was married the end of June, none of the gang had seen him since long before his engagement. The usual stag dinner which the boys would have liked to give him hadn’t been discussed. Larry, himself, hadn’t heard from Bemrose since the party at his house five or six weeks ago.

Naturally the boys wondered about Lucy, what she was like, and when Larry dealt, he tried to satisfy their curiosity. He put down the cards to illustrate Mrs. Bemrose’s symmetrical distribution when Bemrose unexpectedly walked in, and the evening was finished. The gang attempted to congratulate him, but their good wishes went stale as warm beer. Bemrose looked edgy, miserable. His coat slipped from the back of his chair, and he let it lie in Danny’s sawdust.

The first round of the game everyone stayed. There was almost a hundred dollars in the pot. Cy O’Malley raised, Bemrose called, and Cy put down three ten spots. Arthur beat him with four kings and hauled in the chips, a wedding present from the boys. The next hand was deuces wild, and Bemrose drew two deuces. He was four hundred bucks ahead in a half hour, a run of luck that happened once in a year of Saturday nights.

Ordinarily someone would have wisecracked, “What’s the matter? Your love life sour?”; tonight the boys were very careful. Very, very careful.

With the third beer, Tremont Friendly, punctilious Terry who answered every letter and remembered every birthday and the only one likely to be hurt because Bemrose hadn’t invited the rest of them to the wedding, decided to do the right thing. He cleared his throat, and precisely raised his glass. “A toast to Arthur’s wife, boys,” he said. “To Mrs. Bemrose’s health.” Self-consciously he pointed the glass at Arthur.

Bemrose grunted his thanks, put down his beer without drinking, and shuffled the cards for the next round.

Terry looked as though he had been slapped.

This furtiveness of Bemrose’s was a little silly, Larry decided, even if he had married late in life and wanted to appear matter-of-fact about it. A man couldn’t hide a new wife in his vest pocket, because he felt ill at ease as a husband.

“Give Lucy my love,” Larry said easily. “When you came in, I was telling the boys about her. By the way, how is she these days? I know she’s beautiful, but otherwise----”

“Not so well.” Bemrose sponged his neck with a paper napkin.

“The hot weather?” Larry asked.

“I don’t know. Not feeling well.” His tone said to forget about it and go on with the game.

A companionable murmur circled the table. “Too bad.” “It’s a helluva summer to be in town.”

Larry could tell that something was cooking with Cy. They called him total-recall O’Malley. He had a deceptive baby roundness--turned-up nose, second chin, football shoulders and talky blue eyes. If he telephoned to ask someone for lunch, Cy sometimes gabbed for an hour, then made the lunch date anyway and gabbed some more.

“Did you hear what happened to Danny?” Cy asked. “A drunk came in the other day with a live lobster and handed it across the bar, told Danny it was a present for him. You know Danny. He’s polite; so he says, ‘Thanks, I’ll take him home to dinner.’ This drunk shakes his head and says, ‘Naw, he’s had dinner, take him to the movies.’”

The joke wasn’t that funny, but it broke the tension, and the small, hot room went up in a roar. Chuck Adams grabbed his ankle, Hagerty delightedly shook hands with himself, and Paul Schmid put a hand on Bemrose’s arm. The releasing laughter, which seemed louder because Bemrose had kept them bottled up, rolled through Danny’s sagging door and down the rickety stairs.

There was a sudden conscious silence while the sound blew out like radio tubes. Bemrose turned on Cy without a word and his look was the closest thing to a right hook that Larry had ever seen.

The game broke up, and Larry left Bemrose waiting at the curb for a taxi. Larry didn’t even bother to offer to hang around and have a drink with him.

He had started down the street in his shirtsleeves, his coat uncomfortably weighing on his arm, when someone called to him, and there was Arthur H. in person.

“Have a heart. It’s no night for a track meet,” Bemrose complained.

They headed for Larry’s apartment. Bemrose was puffing and the sweat ran in rivers down his face.

“What have you been doing?” he asked amiably.

“Not a helluva lot,” Larry said. “I looked for you at that Red Cross dinner last week, the one at the Starlight Roof. I thought you usually went.”

“Shore always invited me,” Bemrose explained. “This year I took tickets, but he didn’t say anything about sitting with him. I didn’t want to go alone if he were there with a big party.”

“He must have figured you were on your honeymoon,” Larry said. “That’s what I figured when I didn’t hear from you.”

“I would have called and asked you up to the house, but we’re redecorating,” Arthur apologized. “Tonight is the first time in weeks I’ve been out. We haven’t seen a soul.”

“Don’t let it worry you,” Larry said. “Too hot anyway to see people.” He stuffed a damp handkerchief into his back pocket.

They had reached the denuded canopy frame in front of the apartment house where Larry lived. He and Bessie had been trying to get Bemrose down for fifteen years, but this was the first time he made it as far as the door. “Come on up. Bessie’s in Woodmere at her father’s place,” Larry urged.

Bemrose nodded and followed him. Upstairs he inventoried the room. “Nice place,” he said, walking around, and pausing in front of the Soyer. “That’s a powerful painting you have there.”

Larry raised the blinds and opened the front door to get some cross ventilation. He brought two bottles of beer from the kitchen.

“Have you heard anything from Janice Baldwin?” Bemrose asked casually. Too casually.

“Not a word.”

“The internal revenue man was in about a tax matter she turned over to me,” Bemrose said. “It’ll have to wait.” He drank the foam off his beer. “I suppose you have her address----”

“No, but _Everett’s_ must have it.”

“Split another with me?” Bemrose pointed to the remaining bottle of beer which was on the tray. “Never mind about Janice. She’ll turn up.”

He left the room to wash, and when he came back, picked up a rose quartz ash tray from the table and traced the uneven edge with his finger. “I suppose she’s on her way home,” Bemrose said. “She must have seen everything there is to see in Sweden. It’s been more than two months.”

“Maybe she stopped in England,” Larry suggested. “She might be trying to get to the Continent.”

“Oh, she wouldn’t do that,” Arthur said quickly. “That’s too risky.”

There were risks and risks, Larry couldn’t help thinking. There was the risk of seeing Bemrose again. It might be a chance that Janice didn’t dare take at the moment.

“How would you like to come down to my office and give me a hand?” Bemrose asked. “I mean on a permanent basis.”

He must be having a brainstorm: Larry hadn’t thought seriously of being in an office with Bemrose since college.

“My time is taken with seeing clients and trying cases,” Arthur explained. “The office isn’t run right, I’ve neglected it. How about coming in as office manager?” He turned sharply toward Larry. “The practice is growing--I could offer you something substantial.”

Larry swallowed. “It’s swell of you to think I can do it----”

“It would mean security for you,” Bemrose interrupted. He tapped the table with the end of a fresh cigarette, shaking out the loose tobacco. “The way I see it, some years a fellow with a small practice makes out all right, and some years--” He shrugged. “This would mean a steady income for you. There wouldn’t be any bad years.”

With effort Larry located his voice. “It’s swell of you, but I have to think about my clients.”

“Go ahead and work for them. On the side. I don’t want any cut in your practice.”

And you aren’t planning to cut me into any of yours, Larry thought. A few years with Bemrose, and he might end up by not having a practice.

“It’s a big step, closing up shop. I’ll have to have plenty of time to think it over,” Larry said.

Bemrose surveyed the living room with his hand. “What does it cost you and Bessie to live? As high as eight or nine thousand?”

“I’m not sure about going into business,” Larry tried to explain. “At your shop I’d be taking care of detail, handling routine matters. I sort of like plugging away at the law and helping people. Office routine doesn’t sound like a helluva lot of fun.”

“You’re the one man who could run the place right. I could make the money interesting--I could do better than nine thousand. As a matter of fact, I could underwrite considerably more.”

“Let me think it over,” Larry promised. “You’d make a swell boss, but I’ve been on my own for a long time.”

Worry cut into Arthur’s forehead, and Larry felt sorry for him.

“Haven’t we always gotten along like silk?” Bemrose asked. “In the old days at school we used to talk about practicing together. I don’t see why----”

“A fellow gets used to working for himself. He gets used to doing things his own way. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If I decide that it’s too late now to come with you, I’ll help you find someone else. I’ll start looking around for you. There must be someone who’d jump at it.”

“How about Bessie? When is she coming home?”

“Day after tomorrow.”

“Well, ask Bessie. And don’t forget to tell her I’ll make the price right. Have a long talk with her.”

Larry nodded. “I’d come in a minute if I didn’t have things set up for myself. There isn’t another office in town I wouldn’t quit to work for you, but there’s something about practicing for myself--well, you ought to know.”

Arthur buttoned the damp collar of his shirt. He stood up and put out his hand. “If you should happen to hear from Janice, I’d appreciate your letting me know.”

* * * * *

The next day Larry went swimming with Bessie at the Rockaways. The beach was a honeycomb of flesh that shaded from bright pink to bronze, and every inch of neat, fine sand had been disarranged by the bathers. Next to the narrow oblong that Larry and Bess had marked for themselves, a yowling infant who wouldn’t eat the banana it was being offered kept them from talking. By the time Larry finally got around to telling Bess about Bemrose’s proposition, his mind was just about made up. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that a junior partnership might have saved face for him and made the deal possible, but it was too great a defeat at this point for him to give up his practice for a straight salary. If Bemrose had thought it through, he would have seen it himself. A junior partnership would have been the thing to offer him, Larry decided.

On this Sunday afternoon at home, Larry went over the pros and cons. He had been arguing them with himself the past few weeks and began to see why Bemrose’s offer failed to interest him. He shied away from it, not for the reasons he had suggested to Arthur, that it was a blind alley which cut him off from the active practice of the law. The real reason he wanted to turn it down was _because it came from Bemrose_. It was rather startling to find out that he felt that way. He must be afraid of Bemrose. He must be scared of being pushed around by him. Thinking about it, here on the sofa, he felt the moisture on his forehead turn clammy. Was he also worried that Bemrose would try to high pressure him when he found out he was turning him down? Was he afraid that he might not be able to stand up to Bemrose? It was an uncomfortable thought.

“Feel any cooler?” Bessie flopped on the end of the sofa, and shoved the damp curls off her forehead.

“I think I’m going to turn down that offer,” Larry said.

“You’re not worried about the stories Liz told, are you?”

“No-o-o. But I’m afraid I wouldn’t be happy taking orders. It’s the queerest thing, Bess. I always thought I wanted to practice with Arthur. For years I’ve dreamed about it, and now when it’s offered to me, I don’t want it. Maybe I never really wanted it. I guess if I really had, I would have wormed an offer out of him long before this. What do you suppose made me stay away from it?”

“Don’t take it if you feel like that, Larry.”

“But it might not be the best thing for _you_, Bess. If I took it, we could afford a place in Westport maybe, for the summer. We wouldn’t have to go to Woodmere, or swelter in town. This is no fun for you.”

“Don’t you worry, Larry. Papa likes to have us come to Woodmere.” She plucked her flowered housecoat to let the air through.

“If I had the money to be independent, I’d cut loose from Tammany, and we’d move out of the district. This furniture would look a lot better in an apartment uptown. We ought to give some thought to that angle, Bess.”

“Don’t take something you don’t want on account of me.” She fanned herself with the sport section of the Sunday paper.

“I might not accept it for your sake, but I’d be _turning it down_ for both of us. Say the word, and I’ll--” He took her hand.

“I always thought you didn’t care much about practicing law.” She held on to him and soothingly stroked his arm.

“Most of the time I don’t. Not my type of practice. But every once in a while I have fun. That Brunswick case I handled last week-- It takes time to build the right kind of practice, but I’m not in any hurry, am I?”

“You’d rather do it yourself,” she said thoughtfully. “I understand.”

“Arthur H. Bemrose needs me like a hole in the head,” Larry laughed. “Wait and see, when he hears I’m turning him down. He’ll make me think I’m indispensable. Only who is? I know some fellows think there is such a thing, but the country’s too big. It takes more than one man to make any part of it click. Where do you find men that are indispensable? In business? In Washington? Where? No one individual is needed that bad, I don’t care _who_ he is. HAYNES and BEMROSE is going to get along fine without me. You’ll see. In a few years--hell, next year at this time--it won’t matter a damn whether I work for Bemrose, or he works for me.

“That’s the way I feel. If it’s all right with you, kid,” he added.

“We have a nice life, Larry. Would you like to go to an air-cooled movie?” Bess asked, with the homely irrelevance he loved. It subtracted the universal from tough situations. It always made big decisions easier for him.

Later on the subway he told her, “Your friend, Liz, is a swell girl, but I’m glad you’re you.”

She rested her hand on his knee. “I’m glad you’re not Arthur Bemrose. Keep on being a Little Shot, Larry. I like Little Shots. They’re nice to live with.”

She sighed. “Warm, isn’t it?”

_Chapter 9_

Bemrose’s secretary was on her way to the washroom when Larry stopped her in the corridor. “Keeping you busy?” he asked.

Even for a woman who didn’t use makeup, she looked drawn and abnormally white. The fine lines under her eyes seemed to have reproduced by dividing, and heavy purple lined her lower lid. “I’m so glad you’re going in to see him, Mr. Frank,” she said. “He’s not himself lately.”

“You look done in yourself.”

“That’s what _he_ says.” She nodded toward the office door. “He just gave me money to buy a new hat. He says I need it to pick me up.” She shook her head miserably. “It won’t keep me from worrying about him. I tell you, he’s not himself, Mr. Frank.”

Larry flipped his hat against her plain flannel skirt. “Buy yourself that bonnet and cheer up.”

“I didn’t want to take the money, Mr. Frank. I don’t need a hat.”

“Take it anyway,” Larry advised. “To make _him_ feel better.”

Plaintively she said, “But, Mr. Frank, I haven’t worn a hat in three years.”

Larry had been avoiding Bemrose, not wanting to come to grips with him about the office-manager deal, but he couldn’t put off seeing him forever. He opened the reception room door tentatively. It was after five, and no one seemed to be around; so he went on through to Arthur’s room.

“Hello.” Arthur blinked up from some papers. “Thanks for coming over. I’m just finishing up.”

“Take your time.” Larry walked to the window. Three camouflaged cargo ships, about ten thousand tons each, steamed up the River. They were probably Lend-Lease. We must be sending a whale of a lot of stuff overseas. The poor devils over there certainly needed it--this past month the Heinies had stepped things up. If the newspapers were telling it straight, half of London slept underground, taking it unmelodramatically on the spine.

The ships seemed to be moving right along. They had passed Forty Wall and were headed for the Empire State building, doing a good seven or eight knots.

The brief Bemrose was reading crinkled as he turned the pages. Otherwise the room was quiet as Sunday at Salem Fields cemetery. Larry felt clammy cold, although it was exceptionally mild for after Labor Day. The sun was setting in geometric orange strips, and black smoke from the Jersey factories turned the sky into a modern, mechanized painting. The quiet was ominous. Larry realized the phone must be shut off and wondered why Bemrose hadn’t asked an operator to wait. He kept thinking about the job Arthur had offered him and wondered if pressure would be used on him to accept it. Larry examined his blue suit for lint, locating a few specks on the cuff. He wished Bemrose would say something and break the silence.

“With you in a second.” Bemrose made a margin note on the long sheet and took off his glasses. He walked over and stroked Larry’s back affectionately. “How are you doing, boy?

“I have to clean up the work on hand,” he apologized. “I don’t want to leave the clients high and dry.”

“Going somewhere?” Larry asked.

“To war.”

Bemrose’s left shoulder twitched, a new form of the lip tic. Larry watched the moving tweed of Arthur’s coat, so preoccupied with the jumping muscle that he didn’t realize what Bemrose had said.

But the sense of it finally came through to him. “So you’re saving me the trouble of turning down that job you offered me, huh?”

“That’s right! I won’t be needing you now.” Bemrose grinned.

Along with a sense of relief, Larry felt somewhat let down. He had been fighting round after round with himself and came out winner. Now Bemrose made the victory unimportant. While he had chewed over the offer of the summer, Arthur was three jumps ahead of him. Ahead of him by months. Maybe years. Larry admired the hell out of Bemrose’s sixth sense of what was going to be important, his way of smelling things out ahead and giving them priority. As far back as Larry could remember, Bemrose had done priority thinking, long before the word, priority, had come into general use. In anyone else he would call it vacillation perhaps, but in Bemrose it was something else. Flexibility, foresight.

“Did the Army finally take you?” Larry asked.

“Nobody will promise me anything. I don’t know what they need to get going. The facts were in when the Nazis marched into Poland. If a business man sat around waiting for facts and more facts--” Bemrose threw up his hands. “The facts are in, and they sit around, tied hand and foot. 1941, the year of the great sitting paralysis--that’s how they’re going to write about it someday.” He turned on Larry angrily. “Well, let the rest sit around paralyzed. Let the rest of them enjoy warming their fannies. I’m going to get in. The only question is how.”

“Have you put out any feelers?” Larry asked.

Bemrose nodded absentmindedly. “Listen to this.” He shuffled in his middle desk drawer and pulled out a folded notepaper. “Judge Haynes wrote it in 1918,” he said. “We were one helluva time getting into _that_ war, too, and this was an answer to a letter he received from Didier saying the French liked Wilson’s new policy.” Bemrose squinted at the faded writing, tracing the lines until his finger reached the middle of the yellowed paper. “‘Every night I thank God that we are in it with you. I pray we have not come in too late. We must prepare for setbacks because we waited long. I sorrow to think of the days, the months, and the years we allowed to slip by.’”

He read the words solemnly. His deep, full tone crowded the spacious room.

“It could have been written today,” Larry admitted.

“Whenever I have a question, that’s what I do--look back to the Old Man. Nine times out of ten he had already answered it.”

It was curious, his saying that, when Larry had just been thinking about Bemrose looking forward, not backward. He supposed ideas had to come _from_ something, go through a process of change to fit the times, take on the color of a fresh personality, and come out pointing _toward_ something different. Bemrose’s came from Judge Haynes but pointed toward a philosophy of his own. He had a sense of history along with a view of the future.

“I wonder how he’d think I should get in,” Bemrose said wistfully, slipping the Judge’s letter into a corner of his blotter pad.

“What about asking your friend, Tom Newton?” Larry inquired.

“I haven’t seen any of that Washington crowd for months.” Bemrose frowned. “I’ve written Tom twice to get in touch with me when he’s in New York. We wanted to have him up to the house. I can’t figure out why I haven’t heard from him.”

The phone rang, and Bemrose grabbed the receiver as if it were a lifeline. “Don’t give it a thought,” he said. “We’ll make it another time.” His voice sounded tired.

“Professor Storey,” he explained. “They were coming to dinner Friday night, but he’s going out of town.”

Larry watched his shoulder twitch. It was too bad, Bemrose and Lucy in the Brett-decorated house not quite able to organize a dinner party. Larry remembered what Steve Holmes said about Bemrose not making the client-friends happy. Maybe Liz Brett’s stories had made the rounds, and the others were uneasy. A man taking it out on his wife, his wife of three months, was no fun to be around.

“When I get into the War, we’ll close the house,” Bemrose said.

“But you just finished remodeling.”

“Hell, if they _came_ to dinner, she would be scared. She’s never been around anyone much except that Aunt and Uncle.”

Larry pulled a shabby piece of yellow copy paper out of his side coat pocket, and shoved it toward Bemrose. The note was from Janice.

While Arthur read, the shoulder quieted down. The large ears stood out when he reached the last paragraph where Janice had casually sent him regards. It was as though he were straining to catch the tone of her voice.

“You could cable her,” Larry suggested. “She knows people in London. There may be something over there with Lend-Lease----”

“I’d rather try for the Army,” Bemrose said. “The Army will be in it longer.” He handed back the letter. “Good to hear from her.”

His face was lonesome between the oversized ears, and his ample frame looked lost in the outsized tweed coat. The sound of him was humble, too. Larry had never seen a man take to marriage harder. He wanted to say, “Look, it’s a business deal. If it’s grinding you up, why not get out of it? Don’t tear yourself to pieces.” But he kept still.

“I’d like you to hear a part of this brief.” Bemrose pulled some papers from under a jade paperweight. “I won’t try to read the whole thing to you, just parts of it. Lucy’s picking me up in twenty minutes.”

Arthur had told him about the case once, and Larry knew that it involved an appeal from an order of the N. Y. Supreme Court, Special Term. The order granted Bemrose’s client, a Times Square hotel, permission to join an insurance company as party defendant in the suit brought by a guest who had lost valuable papers which were stored in the hotel vault. The insurance company claimed that the jury would be prejudiced in the plaintiff’s favor if it knew the hotel were insured. Juries notoriously brought in thumping verdicts against insurance companies. The companies were fighting the court order desperately, Bemrose explained. If a precedent of impleading them as third parties were established, it might result in huge future losses.

Larry could see the point. There was a settled rule in negligence cases that insurance companies could not be brought into court. It practically amounted to an invitation for heavy damages. The companies in this case had ganged up against Arthur’s client, and he was sweating over his reply brief. He had struggled with the case since spring and won his motion in Special Term on a section of the Civil Practice Act which he unearthed, a section no one else had used for years. While Larry didn’t grasp all the subtleties of Arthur’s argument, there was really no need to. In his practice, he’d never come up against a pack of insurance company lawyers. Anyway, he understood enough to know that Bemrose had turned in a job.

Bemrose paced around Larry’s chair. “_Now_ the so-and-sos have some unofficially reported English cases. They’re going to claim that if the Judge at Special Term had seen these cases, he’d never have granted the motion. Take a look.” He picked up the appellant’s brief from his desk and handed it to Larry. “The English citations start on page ten.”

Larry concentrated on the text, and saw the cases _were_ fairly damaging. “I wouldn’t worry. The Appellate Division won’t reverse it,” he said reassuringly.

“You can never tell with that court. That last English case worries me. It says the real issue should be decided on the merits without supervening and prejudicial circumstances being interposed. The Judge couldn’t say it any plainer. It’s right there.” He pointed to the brief from across the room. “A third party procedure which brings the insurance company before the Court is objectionable.”

Larry turned back to page ten and saw that Bemrose was quoting _verbatim_. In a few minutes he’d be tossing volume, section, and page numbers at him, not only of this case but all the others. Larry had heard of people who memorized railroad timetables. Arthur probably could if he ever had to. If it meant winning a case. His mind was superspeed film which recorded case references infallibly. The boys at law school used to say, “Don’t bother to look it up. Ask Arthur.”

“When the Army finds out about your fantastic memory, you won’t have to worry whether the Idlewild Hotel Corporation impleads an insurance company,” Larry said. “They’ll stick you in a uniform before you can go out and buy mothballs for your other clothes.”

“The insurance company walked out of the case,” Bemrose complained. “We gave them plenty of chance to defend the action, and they wouldn’t touch it. Said they weren’t liable. Now what do they do?” He motioned helplessly. “Raise a howl because we have this order to implead them. Figure it out, Larry. If we have to pay the judgment, then turn around and sue the insurance company before we can collect a red cent----”

Larry glanced at the door.

It was Lucy. Bemrose motioned her to a chair without getting up to greet her. She smiled at Larry and sat down rather stiffly. Larry thought she looked tired, but he couldn’t tell whether it was fatigue, or the weary gray hat and mannish wool overcoat. Some women looked trim in man-tailored clothes, but not Lucy. They didn’t go with her particular beauty which needed fluffs and bows. Arthur may have insisted on the outfit, the way he handed her stripes for the bedroom, Larry guessed. Whatever had done it, she looked years older than Bemrose’s client of a few months ago.

Larry smiled at her. “Arthur tells me you’ve done a nice job of fixing over your place.”

She looked quizzically at Bemrose, her head tilted slightly. “We want you to----”

Larry waved away her apology. He turned toward Arthur. “I’ll go on down with you.”

But Bemrose picked up his brief, pretending not to hear. “Tell me what you think of this as a clincher under Point One. It’s from _Traylos_ versus _Commercial Union of America_, page three hundred fifty-nine.” He read distinctly, giving each syllable its full measure. “‘The purpose of this provision of the Civil Practice Act was to avoid circuity or multiplicity of actions--’ That’s exactly our situation. Just what section one hundred ninety-three is supposed to cover. For the life of me I don’t see how they can claim--” His voice droned on.

Lucy shifted uneasily in her chair.

“Where’s the fire?” Bemrose turned toward her sharply.

“Maybe I’d better phone Marge and tell her we’ll be late.” She went to the door. “I can dial the number out here,” she said.

“Sit down.” Bemrose swung sharply toward Larry.

The gray eyes clouded, but she sat down. She wet a finger and rubbed a scratch in the mounting of her black calf handbag.

“What do you make of this nonsense?” Bemrose slapped a page of the brief. “They maintain that the jury will misconstrue the issue. Instead of concentrating on the plaintiff’s claim, the jury will try to decide whether we’re liable or the Company. You’d think juries never had to decide more than one issue. Why in the _simplest_ actions----”

Larry half listened, while he glanced at Lucy. The stiff thread of tension held her erect. Larry felt his own neck warming with embarrassment for Bemrose.

“Have you told Lucy about the case?” he asked. “It’s a question of whether this insurance company that wrote the policies for Arthur’s client can----”

“Is it the case about the hotel?” She let her eyes thank Larry.

“Yes, it’s about the hotel,” Bemrose answered. “It’s the matter that I’ve been working on nights.”

“The decision will raise hell with insurance companies from now on if the Judge’s order sticks in this case,” Larry explained to her. “They’ll be in for a flock of nasty judgments. He’s really creating new law, your old man.” Larry nodded toward Bemrose.

“Arthur, you didn’t tell me that.” Her voice climbed happily, ready to be proud of him.

“Don’t pay any attention to what Larry says,” Bemrose broke in.

“You’ll have more fun paying attention to what _I_ say than what he says. Let me buy you both a drink,” Larry offered. “This stuff is way over our heads, isn’t it, Lucy?” He walked over and boosted her elbow.

“I have to phone Marge. Arthur promised we would get there early. She’s planning dinner for six-thirty.”

“What are they running, a radio station?” Bemrose asked. “We don’t always have to show up on time. I’ve told you we don’t. People ought to eat when they’re hungry----”

“It will only take a minute to give her a ring,” Lucy said, stretching her arm across his desk.

He pulled the instrument toward him, out of her reach. “We’ll go with Larry and have a drink.”

They found seats down the street at a bar. Bemrose ordered a Martini, rocking in an unsteady chair manufactured to look roughhewn. The place with its stone floor, dim lights, and fake log cabin furniture had the dreariness of an unaired cellar. It must have been the gloom that fortified Bemrose, his troubles crawling into this smelly hole, its dinginess hiding them. He had three Martinis while Larry finished two and Lucy sipped a lukewarm Coca-Cola. The gin made him noisy. Three lawyers Larry recognized from the County Lawyers’ smiled from the next table, and while Bemrose loudly rehashed the details of the appeals’ brief, Larry saw them stop talking. One of them might work for the insurance company-- Larry brushed Arthur’s foot, and he subsided.

He threw back his head and aimed the Martini olive down his throat. “Do you think I should write London?” Arthur asked. “I was going down to Bolling Field tomorrow, but if you think I’d do better writing that party----” When he gets loud, nasal, and starts drinking, he’s thinking of Janice. When he’s evil to Lucy, he’s taking it out on her because of Jan. When he shouts down Little Shots, he’s trying to build up his ego in order to square accounts with Janice. He wants her to know what she gave up and regret it, Larry decided.

Maybe he shouldn’t have shown Arthur the letter from Jan. But it was hard to know the best thing to do. Bemrose had read it and handed it back without any special reaction. He seemed calm enough then. It took three Martinis and Lucy----

She shoved aside her half-filled glass and sneaked a look at her lap where a lavish new diamond watch, undoubtedly a present from Bemrose, shone on her wrist. It was all right for him to give it to her, but apparently not all right for her to look at it.

“I’ll have to run along.” Larry waved for the check. “I promised the boys to stop in at the clubhouse on my way uptown, and Bess expects me home tonight for dinner.”

He patted the top of Lucy’s hand. “Bess is like your Aunt,” he explained. “She likes to sit down and eat right on time.”

_Chapter 10_

A month later Marge Daugherty, Lucy’s aunt, phoned and invited Larry to dinner, saying that she had always wanted him to come up, ever since he had been so nice about helping Lucy with her case, and that she and Ed didn’t see nearly enough of Lucy and Arthur’s friends. She made it sound casual. It was going to be just the family. They’d put on an extra plate for him, as easy as that.

Larry accepted, and joined them in a round of drinks when he arrived. Arthur complained about the old-fashioned Ed had mixed. “Still loading them with sugar.” He held his squat glass up to the light. “Damned stuff won’t even dissolve. It’s one way to kill good rye.”

“Is it too sweet again?” Marge reached for his glass. “I’ll fix you another.” She glanced at Ed accusingly on her way to the kitchen. “Just because _you_ like them sweet doesn’t mean other people want to get diabetes.”

“I only put in half the usual,” Ed muttered.

Marge picked up a fresh glass, and spooning a tip of sugar from the bowl, sprinkled a few crystals on top of an orange slice while Lucy called to her, “Not _any_ in Arthur’s.”

Bemrose let them wrangle. It was obviously satisfactory to him if they fussed over his cocktail. He sprawled in the armchair, and thanked Marge curtly when she handed him the glass, not bothering to mention the drink she had thrown away on his account.

They sat down to dinner at a table in a corner of the living room, and Marge apologized for the simple meal, assuring Larry that they were treating him just like home folks.

Ed took his place at the head of the table, although it bothered Bemrose to sit alongside. He made a to-do about straddling the table leg, and Larry understood for the first time why protocol was important at state dinners. A man’s place at the head of the table gave him authority, as though his opinions mattered. Ed’s seemed to need bolstering, at least when Bemrose was around.

They might not have started on the War as quickly if Marge had been there to appease them with small talk, but after the first course, she left the room to bring in the roast. Lucy wanted to help her, but Marge urged her to stay put, probably to keep Arthur and Ed from ruining each other’s digestions.

At that point Larry guessed why he had been invited. Marge probably hoped he would ease what must be the growing tension of these family dinners. She and Lucy together couldn’t manage Bemrose and were counting on Larry to give them a hand, or at least to show them how it was done. Larry noticed that Lucy stopped eating whenever Ed began to talk.

He was discussing the recent Nazi drive into Russia, commanded by von Bock. Already the Germans had closed in on Leningrad, although the Russian war was scarcely a hundred days old. The Nazis had about two million men and five thousand tanks in the field. “The paper tonight says they’re pretty close to Moscow,” Ed observed. “I wonder if the Russians can hold out.”

Bemrose shook his head gravely. “I hope to God they can. It’s going to take at least until spring for our stuff to get through.”

Ed meticulously buttered a roll. “We voted them some more Lend-Lease the other day. That should hold them. About five million dollars worth, wasn’t it?” he asked sharply.

“Right now it looks like another Dunkirk.”

“The Church would just as soon see them go down,” Ed remarked.

“I wouldn’t be dogmatic about it,” Bemrose pointed out. “Judge Murphy made a statement in Washington, backing up the President on Russia, and he’s a prominent Catholic.”

“You’ve got the whole Lindbergh crowd on the other side, too,” Ed reminded him. “Lindbergh, Wheeler, General Wood. Did you hear that broadcast from Rome? It said that Lindbergh had better do the talking over here instead of Roosevelt----”

Bemrose hacked viciously at the lamb bone on his plate.

Lucy put her hand on his sleeve, warning him.