I galloped across the lobby toward the heavy glass doors and sunlight. Behind the streamlined reception desk, more appropriate to a luxury liner than an apartment building, was the ruddy-faced doorman.
“Hi. Did you see my sister go out today?”
“No, Miss,” he answered in a thick brogue, “but then I only come on at eight.”
“Ah.” I hesitated with a charming smile. “Well. Tell me something.” (I tried Mother’s ingratiating imperative.) “Um, what time does the mail get delivered? I mean, to the people in the building?”
“Oh, Miss, maybe just over a half hour ago.”
“And the newspaper?”
“Oh, somewhere around six or seven. Just a minute, Miss.” He moved to the door to let in an elderly couple with a poodle and a Gristede’s shopping bag, then bolted the door open so that all the sounds of the morning spewed in. A battle of simultaneous desires was shaping up; whether to go out or stay and satisfy my curiosity. After some consideration I followed him to the immense tropical plant at the entrance. It was embarrassing—even melodramatic—to ask for a key to apartment 403, but I did anyway.
“No problem, Miss. I’ll ring Pete and ask him to take you up. He’s in the basement.”
“No, no, no, thanks, that’s too much trouble.” Ridiculous. For instance, what if she had had to meet Bill Francisco, a young director at the Yale Drama School (and romantic interest), for whom she was doing some kind of production work? She had probably left a message on my service. A telephone was clearly indicated. Again, Stark’s. Besides, Bridget was so intensely ferocious about her privacy there was no telling what she’d do if she knew I’d go to such lengths to break into her sanctuary. Although Bridget was a year and a half younger, I was afraid of her. “Listen, do me a favor—when you see her, tell her I came by and rang but there was no answer and I’ll call her later. Okay?”
He nodded and started to lift his hand, but I was already out the door, feeling infinitely better, and striding toward Lexington.
By the time I’d downed my O.J., read the paper, checked Belles for a negative on messages, and gone to the ladies room, the grand superstructure of the day had begun to disintegrate. Out of perverseness, I jumped on the subway and went down to a sound stage on Fourth Street to watch the shooting of Kay Doubleday’s big strip scene in Mad Dog Coll, a gangster film that can still, to my embarrassment, be seen occasionally on late-night TV. (It was the first movie I’d ever been in; I had many difficult things to do, like play the violin and get raped by Vincent [Mad Dog] Coll, played by a young actor named John Chandler, who, on completion of the movie, decided to become a priest.) Kay Doubleday was in my class at Lee Strasberg’s; it was in the interest of art, I told myself, to watch her prance down a ramp, singing and stripping her heart out.
I then ate a huge heavy lunch at Moscowitz & Lupowitz with the art director Dick Sylbert. Over coffee, he smoked his pipe and patiently tried to explain the difference between champlevé and cloisonné enamel. This meandered into a discussion of etching techniques. Having killed the afternoon to my thorough satisfaction, I took a slow bus up Madison Avenue in order to read Time magazine. It was an absolutely beautiful four o’clock, the best in months, and when the bus got as far as Fifty-fourth Street, I decided to disembark, fetch Bridget after first giving her hell, and buy a new pair of shoes.
About a block away from her building, a strange thing happened. I was seized by what seemed to be a virulent case of the flu. My temperature rose and fell five degrees in as many seconds. Hot underground springs of scalding perspiration seeped out everywhere, and yet I was shaking with cold, frostbitten inside and out. There was nothing reassuring about the pavement under my feet; I couldn’t move forward on it. Well, I thought, by way of helpful explanation, I should be getting home anyway. Besides, after the screw-up this morning she owes me the next move; either this is repressed anger or premenstrual tension, but in any case how virtuous and rich I shall feel for not having bought a pair of shoes this afternoon.
I hailed a cab fast, so that I wouldn’t have to waste time squatting on Fifty-fourth Street at rush hour with my head between my legs. Ah, well, I thought feverishly, “I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled,” an ague hath my ham; marrow fatigue, not enough exercise, no tennis, badminton, swimming, fencing, volleyball, modern dance, any dance. I missed school gymnasiums, horseback riding; all I did now was tramp concrete sidewalks and wooden stages and Central Park on weekends. Middle age was phasing out into senility. I fooled the cabdriver, though, by smiling at him so he wouldn’t notice all the change I dropped as we pulled up to 15 West Eighty-first Street, across from the Hayden Planetarium. Dark and cool, its dingy Moorish fountained-and-tiled lobby always welcomed me home from the wars. I rose in the elevator, gratefully trying to snuggle against its ancient varnished paneling, and finally stood with ossified
