The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy [122]
I didn’t dream it or invent it or imagine it. I couldn’t have. There were things—two things in particular—that I just couldn’t have made up. The jazz club blowing its lullaby through the night across the empty street, and the way he trembled when he came over to take me.
When I woke up this morning I found myself staring at rows and rows of books. My first thought was that I’d gone stark raving mad with my library obsession at the station in Chicago, and that I was now hallucinating in a loony bin. Max was sitting beside me in a dressing gown.
“It’s a library,” I whispered.
“Yes, it’s the library. Since I was always in here just before I went to sleep I decided last year to move my bed and things in as well. How are you?”
I stretched. “Wonderful!”
“Hungry?”
“Oh golly, yes.” I suddenly remembered we hadn’t eaten a thing since the chicken sandwiches yesterday.
“I’ll see what I’ve got in the kitchen.”
“Catch,” he said, returning with two oranges. “I’m afraid that’s all there is.” We ate the oranges lying next to each other on the bed. I looked at his dressing gown. “Plain blue,” I said. “No leopard skin?”
He grinned. “It’s a little too early in the morning, isn’t it? Anyway, that’s for Them. D’you know what I mean?”
I said I did.
We finished the oranges and he kissed me.
“I’m tired of living in sin with you,” he said after a while. “Let’s get married. Then I can take you to Japan with me.”
I lay very quietly, not daring to say anything. I was afraid it was just cheap chatter. I was afraid he was kidding me. I mean why me? Why me?
“What’s the matter? What is it?”
“This can’t be happening to me,” I said.
“Don’t you like me?”
“I love you. If you hadn’t existed I would have had to invent you.”
“Don’t you believe it. I invented myself. What’s wrong? Please tell me, darling.”
“It’s too good. There must be a catch.”
He sat up. “As a matter of fact, there is,” he said seriously. He started to go on, but I stopped him. “Hand me my slip, will you?” I said. “I think I’ll take this on my feet, if you don’t mind.” I put it on and began pacing around the room. “O.K. Spill it, old sport. It’s the not knowing that kills me,” I said gloomily.
He had that same troubled look I’d seen last night. “I’m illegitimate,” he said.
I stopped dead in my tracks. “Oh, no! But how exciting! How perfect! How absolutely glamorous!”
“Well, thank you, Sally Jay.” He didn’t bother to hide his relief. “Yes, I suppose it is. I’m glad you think so, anyway. My family—that is, the aunts and uncles who brought me up—took a rather different view. They’re on my mother’s side. I took my mother’s name.”
“What: was she like?”
“I don’t know. She died soon after I was born. A rather wild young thing apparently, dashing off to the Continent for la vie de boherne as they called it in those days. Got mixed up with all those crazy godforsaken artists and actors and that lot. She was a lost soul to her family. A wicked wicked girl.”
“And your father?” A look of uncertainty flickered across his face. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “How stupid of me. Of course, you never knew who he was, did you?”
“But I do. The aunts told me when they thought I was old enough. It was in the contract.”
“Who was it?”
“Brace yourself,” said Max.
I was standing at the back of a chair. I gripped it hard with my hands and then I leaned down over it. I don’t know why. To keep the circulation flowing or something. “Who was it?” I repeated.
“Stefan.”
“Yeow!” I nearly toppled over. I sat down weakly. “But why didn’t you say so? Why didn’t he? I just don’t get it.”
Max laughed. “Stefan admit to a grown-up son? In the presence of a pretty girl? You have a lot to learn about us Hungarians, baby,” he said in Stefan’s voice.
So now all I have to do is decide what sort of clothes to buy for Japan. They’ll be all wrong anyway, I suppose. Perhaps I’ll dye my hair black to get into the swing of things. Then we have to get married—the two years are almost up, so Uncle Roger shouldn’t mind my contacting him to be best man.