The New Yorker Stories - Ann Beattie [224]
“You know what I did one time?” I said suddenly, deciding to see if I could shock him for once. “When I was having that affair with Harry? One night we were in his apartment—his wife was off in Israel—and he was cooking dinner, and I was going through her jewelry box. There was a pearl necklace in there. I couldn’t figure out how to open the clasp, but finally I realized I could just drop it over my head carefully. When Harry hollered for me, I had all my clothes off and was lying on the rug, in the dark, with my arms at my side. Finally he came after me. He put on the light and saw me, and then he started laughing and sort of dove onto me, and the pearl necklace broke. He raised up and said, ‘What have I done?’ and I said, ‘Harry, it’s your wife’s necklace.’ He didn’t even know she had it. She must not have worn it. So he started cursing, crawling around to pick up the pearls, and I thought, No, if he has it restrung at least I’m going to make sure it won’t be the same length.”
Ned and I turned our heads to see Richard, his robe neatly knotted in front, kneesocks pulled on, his hair slicked back.
“What are you two talking about?” he said.
“Hey, Richard,” Ned said, not managing to disguise his surprise.
“I don’t smell cigarette smoke, do I?” Richard said.
“It’s coming from below,” I said, closing the window.
“We weren’t talking about you,” Ned said. His voice was both kind and wary.
“I didn’t say you were,” Richard said. He looked at me. “May I be included?”
“I was telling him about Harry,” I said. “The story about the pearls.” More and more, it seemed, we were relying on stories.
“I never liked him,” Richard said. He waved a hand toward Ned. “Open that a crack, will you? It’s too hot in here.”
“You already know the story,” I said to Richard, anxious to include him. “You tell Ned the punch line.”
Richard looked at Ned. “She ate them,” he said. “When he wasn’t looking she ate as many as she could.”
“I didn’t want them to fit anymore if she tried to put them over her head,” I said. “I wanted her to know something had happened.”
Richard shook his head, but fondly: a little gesture he gave to indicate that I was interchangeable with some gifted, troublesome child he never had.
“One time, when I was on vacation with Sander, I picked up a trick in Puerto Rico,” Ned said. “We were going at it at this big estate where the guy’s employer lived, and suddenly the guy, the employer, hears something and starts up the stairs. So I ran into the closet—”
“He played football in college,” Richard said.
I smiled, but I had already heard this story. Ned had told it at a party one night long ago, when he was drunk. It was one of the stories he liked best, because he appeared a little wild in it and a little cagey, and because somebody got his comeuppance. His stories were not all that different from those stories boys had often confided in me back in my college days—stories about dates and sexual conquests, told with ellipses to spare my delicate feelings.
“So I grabbed whatever was hanging behind me—just grabbed down a wad of clothes—and as the guy comes into the room, I throw open the door and spring,” Ned was saying. “Buck naked, I start out running, and here’s my bad luck: I slam right into him and knock him out. Like it’s a cartoon or something. I know he’s out cold, but I’m too terrified to think straight, so I keep on running. Turns out what I’ve grabbed is a white pleated shirt and a thing like a—what do you call