The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy [117]
They took it stoically enough—my father rather more than my mother, no doubt because of his ecclesiastical training. And life went on. The one bright spot was my cousin John’s letter assuring me that, come what may, blood, by God, was thicker than water and he was going to do everything in his goddam power to see that my name was kept out of his newspaper at all costs.
The months went by and I really tried. I never got into any trouble. I never went out with any men. I never did anything wrong.
Except one day I was up on a ladder putting away some rather heavy books on the top shelf (I don’t know why they’re so smug about their system: the heaviest books always turned out to belong on the top shelves), when I happened to drop a few and they happened to conk someone on the head. A man in a baize-green-colored suit and a pale green shirt. He wore gray suède shoes.
It was Max Ramage, not that you could miss him.
He looked up to see what hit him.
“Well I’m damned. Miss Gorce—right in my own backyard. Come down at once. I’ve been looking all over for you!” he shouted up at me.
“All over here?” I was as stunned as if the books had hit me.
“All over the world. I just happened in here by chance. I’m going to Japan in two weeks, so I thought I’d cram a bit on it before I left. It’s my local branch. What in heaven’s name are you doing up there?”
But I was in much too much of a hurry to go into all that. There was something I had to straighten him out about immediately. Before another second flew by. I’d never been in such a hurry. I began scrambling down the ladder talking furiously the whole time.
“Listen, I’ve got to explain to you why I was in such a stew that night we met. I mean I know what you thought—only I didn’t realize you thought it until you left and by then it was too late—and anyway it wouldn’t have mattered because I still couldn’t have told you what the trouble really was. I mean— what I mean is—was—that I wasn’t pregnant.… Honestly I …” And then my voice trailed off into a thin line of drivel.
He smiled up at me and stretched his long arms wide apart. “Come straight into my arms!” he said. Just like that. So I stepped right down into them. He hugged me tightly and 1 swayed a little and stumbled over one of the books and that made me come to. I pulled away, embarrassed, expecting to find the whole library in an uproar, but somehow nobody was taking any notice.
“There’s something I’ve got to tell you too,” he said. “Show you, rather.” From the inside pocket of the green lining of his green jacket he drew out a handful of photographs and showed me one.
“Me,” I said wonderingly. “It’s me.”
“What’d I tell you?” he said triumphantly. “You see, I have been looking all over for you. Why the devil didn’t you keep in touch with Stefan? Never mind. Come on, we’re wasting time.” He took me by the arm and, stepping over the books, we left.
We went into a cocktail bar just off Fifth Avenue on Eighth Street. One of those suave, sexy bars, dead dark, with popcorn and air-conditioning and those divine cheese things.
“What’ll you have?” he asked. “Champagne? Have anything. Money’s no object. Look. Wads of it. Ceylon. Can’t spend it fast enough. We photographers are the New Rich.”
We had dry martinis; great wing-shaped glasses of perfumed-fire, tangy as the early morning air.
“Now,” he said. “I have to ask you three questions. How old-are you? Are you in love? And what in God’s name are you doing here?”
So I told him all about it. It was really a very long story. At the end he said “Good. Now ask me something. Anything.”
“Where did you get that suit?” I asked him.
“This one? Nice, isn’t it. Had a bitter struggle with my tailor over it. He refused to make it at first. Said the material was too soft. Said it would pick up things.”
“It has,” I said excitedly. “Look——”
“That’s it!” he said suddenly. “That’s the expression I remembered. Questing. You have the most questing profile in the whole world, Miss Gorce.”
“No, but look,” I insisted. “It has