The Rose Garden Page 5

  “Almost like twins,” Charles echoed generously, because it did promise to be a very pleasant day. “You know, Leona, this is quite an event in my life. I’ve grown very fond of you in the last eight years, my dear.” He giggled gently. “How is the good George, by the way?”

  “Oh, Charles, you know George. He trundled off an hour ago, just like a good little businessman. He’s probably sitting behind his desk already, telling some wretched creature to bring back the dinette set or be sued, or something. What a job for a man to have.”

  George Harkey, Leona’s husband, was credit manager of one of New York’s larger and less fashionable department stores.

  “Well, we all must work,” Charles said briskly, sitting up in bed. “And I should have been at my scribbling an hour ago. We meet at the Plaza, then. At twelve-fifteen. That will leave us ample time to lunch and still get to the theater by curtain time. All right, my dear?”

  “Twelve-fifteen,” Leona said. “And Charles, I have a most amusing surprise for you.”

  “Splendid, Leona. I adore surprises. Now I really must go, Leona. Goodbye.”

  He replaced the phone, slid out of bed, wrapped himself in a dressing gown of thin gold wool—a gift from Leona—and plugged in his electric kettle, after assuring himself that it held enough water to make two cups of coffee. Leona and her friends would have been astonished at the absence of grace and charm in Charles’s domestic arrangements. They might even have been outraged, considering the stringent demands he made on their establishments. He puttered about, fetching a bottle of cream from his windowsill, measuring powdered instant coffee into his porcelain tumbler, and unwrapping a large, sticky delicatessen bun. Then he looked around for his morning newspapers. They were nowhere to be seen. He searched the room carefully, and at last, growing peevish, he even peered under his armchair, shook the window curtains, and pawed through his bed coverings. No sign of the papers. He was in the habit of buying the Times and the Tribune on his way home every night, and leaving them unopened, to read while he breakfasted.

  Mike, the undersized, bespectacled elevator boy, who doubled as bellboy and porter, delivered the morning editions of the newspapers to the doors of other tenants in the hotel, but Charles was frugal, and refused to pay the small fee that this extra service cost. Now he was paperless, and his coffee was cooling. He gazed gloomily at the bun that had caused this disorder in his life—for there was no doubt in his mind that he had left the papers on the delicatessen counter the night before. His breakfast was ruined. Well, he wouldn’t let it be ruined.

  Knotting the sash of his robe firmly around his small middle, he unlocked his door, opened it, and looked out into the hall. There, in front of the opposite door, were the Times and the Tribune.

  Charles paused, looked, listened, dived across the hall, grabbed the papers, and bounded backward to his own door, which resisted him. Gently and treacherously, his door had locked itself. No use to wring the handle, no use to push, no use to peer in the keyhole. The door was locked. A faint sound issued from inside the room whose tenant he had just robbed. He sprinted for the elevator and rang. Mike would have a passkey. Mike would let him into his room, and he would be safe again. With horror, he realized that he was still clutching the newspapers in his arms, and that the elevator, shuddering with age and unwillingness, was climbing up to his floor. He rammed both papers down the front of his robe, wrapped his arms about himself as though he were cold, and, when Mike threw back the elevator door, said, “I seem to have locked myself out of my room, Mike—of all foolish things. Would you bring your passkey?”

  “How come you got locked out?” Mike inquired loudly as he sauntered along behind Charles, swinging the keys on their large brass ring.

  “I was looking for the maid. She forgot to leave me any soap. The inefficiency of that woman is quite monstrous.”

  “You could of called the desk for your soap,” Mike said.

  Oh, yes, Charles thought. I could have called the desk for my soap. And you could have brought my soap up. And I could have given you a tip. None of that, my lad. “Will you hurry with that door, please?” he said sharply. “I could catch my death of cold standing out here.”

  Mike unlocked the door and pushed it open. Charles slipped past him, and turned to shoulder the door shut, but Mike, with one foot over the threshold, stood holding it open. He removed his spectacles, hawed breathily on them, and began to polish them on the section of his jacket that lay between his breast pocket and his dingy brass buttons. “You want I should bring you some soap?” he asked, and squinted into his spectacles before replacing them on his nose.

  “Later,” Charles cried, seeing the door across the way begin to open.

  Across the hall, a flannel-clad arm appeared and began to feel confidently around on the floor. Hypnotized, Charles watched the disembodied hand pluck blindly at the worn edge of the carpet. Above the arm, a tousled black head appeared, turned downward to the floor at first, and then turned up to reveal a pinched face full of sleep and bad temper.

  “Why, good morning, Miss Carmichael!” Mike cried.

  “Where the hell are my papers, Mike?” Miss Carmichael demanded, and, standing up, showed a tiny, spare figure enveloped in maroon flannel.

  “Why, aren’t they there, Miss Carmichael? I left them there,” Mike said.

  “Really,” Charles said, “you must excuse me.”

  There was a second’s silence.

  “Would you mind removing your body from my door?” he said, and saw the suspicion in Mike’s face turn to certainty.

  “Why, certainly, Mr. Runyon,” Mike said. “I’ll do that little thing.”

  Charles kicked the door shut, locked it, hurled the papers onto his bed, dashed into the bathroom, and turned the shower on full, to save his ears from the altercation that he knew must be taking place outside.

  When he emerged from the bathroom, he was calmer. He wasted no time in regrets. What had been done had been done. The question was how to survive the morning’s absurd disaster with dignity.

  He stepped into his shorts, which were of the same pink-and-white silk broadcloth as his new shirts. Then he lifted the papers from his bed to his desk and set about erasing Miss Carmichael’s name. No use. Mike evidently wrote with an iron nail dipped in ink. The name had soaked through to the second page, and partly to the third. Charles sat down, lit a cigarette, and thought. He couldn’t leave the papers here in the room, obviously. Mechanically, he put the bottle of cream out on the windowsill. Then, suddenly inspired, he returned to the desk and picked up the papers. Of course. What could be simpler than to drop the wretched things down into the limbo of broken beer bottles, rusty hairpins, and odd shoes that lay eight floors below his window? In that mess, they would never be noticed, if anyone ever looked out there.

  He raised the window an inch or two, and then, just as he was preparing to slide the papers out, there was a flurry and a thump on the fire escape across from him, and he stared straight into the dark and warlike countenance of Diamond, the floor maid, who was beating a tattoo on the rail of the fire escape with her dust mop, setting free a disgusting gray cloud that struggled a moment on the air before beginning to drift back into the rooms from which it had been taken.

  The papers were still out of sight, and Charles let them drop to the floor. Raising the window a few inches higher, he gestured gracefully through the aperture, as though he were testing the quality of the air. His nonchalance undid him, for he upset the bottle of cream, which dropped from view with a soundless inexorability that was more alarming to Charles than anything that had yet happened that morning. A long, ascending skirl of wicked glee issued from the throat of Diamond, and her mop beats accelerated. From far below came the noise of a small crash, followed by swearing.

  Charles plunged his head out the window and stared down. The square floor of the shaft was wet, and in the middle of it, brandishing a sputtering hose, stood a man whose upturned face looked, even at this distance, unpleasa
ntly contorted. As Charles stared (should he throw down some money? or try to say something calming?), the man threw down the hose and vanished through a doorway.

  Charles glanced up at Diamond, who was now resting herself comfortably against the rail.

  “Gone to tell Mr. Dowd,” she said. Mr. Dowd was the current manager.

  Charles banged down the window and scurried to the middle of the room, where he stood chattering to himself with dismay. Deny it, of course, he said. Deny the whole thing. Knew nothing about it. Never saw a cream bottle. Heard nothing. Window was shut tight all morning . . .

  He wrenched one of his new shirts out of its wrappings, dragged his new suit of slate-gray English flannel from its hanger, and began to dress himself. As, with trembling fingers, he tied his bow tie, which was also of the pink-and-white striped silk broadcloth, there was a knocking on his door. He stood still and waited.

  “Got your soap here, Mr. Runyon!” Mike cried.

  “Knock again,” said Diamond’s voice. “Knock good this time.”

  Mike dealt the door a mighty wallop. “I know he’s in there,” he said to Diamond.

  “Maybe he’s reading the paper,” Diamond whispered, and the two tormentors moved off down the hall. Charles waited till he heard the elevator door close before he finished tying his tie. Then he dropped his hands to his dressing table and stared listlessly at himself in the mirror.

  The phone rang. He picked it up and heard the intimate, confidential voice of Miss Knight, the telephone operator, who was very sensitive, and always smiled conspiratorially at Charles, because she knew that he was sensitive, too.

  “Mr. Runyon,” she whispered. “I wish you had confided in me about keeping food on your windowsill. The management is very strict about cooking in the rooms, Mr. Runyon, but some of the tenants have their little ways, so that they won’t be found out. Oh, I know how it is. I like my cup of coffee in the morning, and maybe an egg, but—”

  “Your feeding habits are even less interesting than I would have imagined them to be, Miss Knight,” Charles said, and hung up.

  Miss Knight was probably the only friend he had in the hotel, but he didn’t care. He wanted to get out, to see Leona, to sit at luncheon in the Plaza, to be treated with the deference he expected and deserved. But there were still the papers to deal with. His topcoat went poorly with his new suit, but he would just have to wear it, and carry the papers out underneath . . . But no. In a burst of optimism brought on by yesterday afternoon’s brilliant sunshine, he had sent the topcoat to the cleaner’s, and his winter coat was already in storage. Grimly, he began to unbutton his new jacket.

  A little later, Charles stood at the elevator, ringing the bell, for the second time that morning. His form no longer expressed the slender and fluid, yet snug, line that had given his tailor so much trouble and pleasure. From his neck to below his waist, he showed a solid, curving, birdlike bulge. He stood stiffly, and breasted his way warily into the elevator, turning an aloof and thoughtful profile to Mike’s glances.

  As Charles stepped from the elevator, the manager pounced from his place of concealment behind the desk. His round white face shone with the brimming contentment of the hotel man about to deal successfully with a tricky situation involving a guest. Miss Knight swiveled around to watch, ignoring frenzied appeals from her switchboard, and Mike let the elevator buzz.

  “Mr. Runyon,” the manager said. “That regrettable incident this morning—I’m terribly sorry, but we can’t permit light housekeeping in the rooms. Sanitary regulations, you know. I’m sure you understand, Mr. Runyon.”

  “Really, Mr. Dowd, I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” Charles cried.

  “Then that’s understood, Mr. Runyon,” the manager said, and vanished behind the key slots. Miss Knight placed consoling hands on her switchboard. Her voice was soft and amused. Whistling, Mike entered his elevator and crashed the door to with the air of one who wields cymbals. Like a ghost, Charles passed through the lobby, through the entrance doors, and down the stone steps to the street. Only the hateful paper padding that was suffocating him seemed alive. He stood transfixed in the clean, clear spring sunshine and thought, I must not think, I must not remember . . . A taxi loitered near him, and he plunged into it and found he had to recline sidewise on the seat, because he could not sit. He directed the driver to the Altamont, a large commercial hotel on Eighth Avenue, where he could be fairly certain of not running into anyone he knew.

  As he was getting into the taxi, a button popped from his jacket and dropped into the gutter. He felt it pop and saw it fall, but he let it go. Even had he wanted to leave the shelter of the taxi, he could not have bent to retrieve the button. A pity; the buttons for his suit had been specially ordered from Italy. Leona had the same buttons on her suit. Now he would have to go through the whole afternoon watching Leona preen herself in a complete set of his buttons, in a gigantic travesty of his suit—for she was taller than he, and her arms were very long. What a complete fool he had been to allow her to go to his tailor.

  The men’s room at the Altamont was at the foot of a curving flight of stairs immediately to the left of the main entrance. It was a dank, white-tiled vault, occupied, when Charles walked in, only by the attendant, who was sorting the brushes and rags in his shoeshine kit. Charles took off his coat and unbuttoned his shirt, and pulled the papers out and threw them into the wastebasket. Turning his back on them and on his memories of the morning, he sprinkled a few drops of cold water on his chest and rubbed himself dry with his palms, averting his eyes from the paper towels over the washbasin. The attendant, a lanky man whose eyes were so blinded by boredom that he no longer troubled to focus them, raised his head at the sound of the running water and then lowered it again.

  Refreshed, Charles stepped back from the washbasin and slipped his arms into his shirt. He buttoned the middle buttons first and moved swiftly up to the top. Really, he looked remarkably soigné, considering what he’d been through. The habit of poise, he thought contentedly. He had fastened the top button and was reaching for his tie when he saw that his fingers were smudged with newsprint and had left a track all the way up his front. He snatched a paper towel, dampened it, and rubbed at the smudges, making them worse. Leaning closer to the mirror, he saw that the damage was complete. Now his shirt looked like a used rag. He turned incredulously from the mirror to find the attendant standing behind him.

  “Them marks’ll never come out,” he said.

  Charles tore the shirt off and flung it into the wastebasket, on top of the papers. “Here is ten dollars,” he said. “Go upstairs and get me a plain white shirt, size 14½. You can get it at that shop in the lobby. And hurry.”

  The sleeves of the new shirt were much too long, and the collar would have been more appropriate on a secondhand-car salesman, Charles thought. He let the cuffs slip down around his knuckles, just to see how awful they looked, and then pushed them back to his wrists. His pink-and-white striped tie looked like a little ribbon against the sturdy cloth of the new shirt.

  Out in the street again, he hailed a taxi. It was not yet noon. He had just time to get to the Plaza ahead of Leona. He would catch her before she entered the hotel, and tell her of his new plan, which was to drive out into the country and have lunch at some secluded inn. Leona would have no audience to perform for today, he thought with satisfaction.

  As he entered the lobby of the Plaza, he glanced furtively around, putting his hand to his throat as though to adjust his tie. Leona had not yet arrived. He took up his stand by a window and waited to see her come down the street.

  Leona had arrived at the Plaza a few seconds before Charles, and had gone straight through the lobby and down the hall to the flower shop, where she bought two of the glowing black-red carnations that he loved. One of these she pinned on her lapel, smiling at her own reflection as she did so. Perhaps it was a little naughty of her to have copied his shirt without asking his permission. But after all she had the suit; wh
y not the shirt, too? Charles liked women to look absolutely perfect. How amused and pleased he would be when he saw her. Perhaps even a little flattered. She touched the narrow bow tie lightly, then took the second carnation and walked back to the lobby. There he was, waiting by the window. She called a bellboy and handed him the carnation and a dollar bill, and pointed to Charles, and whispered for a minute.

  Crossing the busy lobby, the bellboy, who was very serious about his work, repeated to himself what he had been instructed to do and say. “First I say, ‘Is this the gentleman in the pink-and-white striped shirt?’ Then I give him the flower. Then I say, ‘The lady in the pink-and-white striped shirt awaits your pleasure, sir.’” He held the carnation very carefully, fearful that the stem would snap.

  Watching the boy approach Charles, Leona laughed excitedly. Dear Charles, she thought. I just can’t wait to see his face when he turns around.

  The Joker

  Waifs, Isobel Bailey called her Christmas Day guests. This year she had three coming, three waifs—a woman, an elderly man, and a young man—respectable people, well brought up, gentle-looking, neatly dressed, to all appearances the same as everybody else, but lost just the same. She had a private list of such people, not written down, and she drew on it every year as the holiday season descended. Her list of waifs did not grow shorter. Indeed, it seemed to lengthen as the years went by, and she was still young, only thirty-one. What makes a waif, she thought (most often as winter came on, always at Christmas); what begins it? When do people get that fatal separate look? Are waifs born?

  Once she had thought that it was their lack of poise that marked them—because who ever saw a poised waif? You see them defiant, stiff, rude, silent, but aren’t they always bewildered? Still, bewilderment was not a state reserved for waifs only. Neither was it, she decided, a matter of having no money, though money seemed to have a great deal to do with it. Sometimes you could actually see people change into waifs, right before your eyes. Girls suddenly became old maids, or at least they developed an incurably single look. Cheerful, bustling women became dazed widows. Men lost their grip and became unsure-looking. It wasn’t any one thing that made a waif. Isobel was sure of that. It wasn’t being crippled, or being in disgrace, or even not being married. It was a shameful thing to be a waif, but it was also mysterious. There was no accounting for it or defining it, and over and over again she was drawn back to her original idea—that waifs were simply people who had been squeezed off the train because there was no room for them. They had lost their tickets. Some of them never had owned a ticket. Perhaps their parents had failed to equip them with a ticket. Poor things, they were stranded. During ordinary days of the year, they could hide their plight. But at Christmas, when the train drew up for that hour of recollection and revelation, how the waifs stood out, burning in their solitude. Every Christmas Day (said Isobel to herself, smiling whimsically) was a station on the journey of life. There on the windy platform the waifs gathered in shame, to look in at the fortunate ones in the warm, lighted train. Not all of them stared in, she knew; some looked away. She, Isobel, looked them all over and decided which ones to invite into her own lighted carriage. She liked to think that she occupied a first-class carriage—their red brick house in Herbert’s Retreat, solid, charming, waxed and polished, well heated, filled with flowers, stocked with glass and silver and clean towels.