except that, really, they had never stopped. Louise was married by now, too, but somehow, from time to time, for shorter or longer periods, she and Michael continued as lovers. There was a moral judgment to be made there some day, Michael felt. But Louise was one of the prettiest girls in New York, small, dark and clever-looking, and she was warm and undemanding. In a way she was dearer to him than his wife. Sometimes, lying next to each other on winter afternoons in a borrowed apartment, Louise would sigh, staring up at the ceiling, and say, 'Isn't this wonderful? I suppose some day we ought to give it up.' But neither she nor Michael took it seriously.
She was standing now next to Donald Wade. For a second, Michael got an unpleasant vision of the complexity of life, but it vanished as he kissed her and said, 'Happy New Year.'
He shook hands gravely with Wade, wondering, as always, why men thought they had to be so cordial to their wives' ex-lovers.
'Hello,' Louise said. 'Haven't seen you in a long time. You look very nice in your pretty suit. Where's Mrs Whitacre?'
'Having her fortune told,' Michael said. 'The past isn't bad enough. She's got to have the future to worry about, too. Where's your husband?'
'I don't know.' Louise waved vaguely and smiled at him in the serious private manner she reserved for him. 'Around.'
Wade bowed a little and moved off. Louise looked after him.
'Didn't he used to go with Laura?' she asked.
'Don't be a cat,' Michael said.
'Just wanted to know.'
'The room,' Michael said, 'is loaded with guys who used to go with Laura.' He surveyed the guests with sudden dissatisfaction. Wade, Talbot, and now another one had come in, a lanky actor by the name of Moran who had been in one of Laura's pictures. Their names had been linked in a gossip column in Hollywood and Laura had called New York early one morning to reassure Michael that it had been an official studio party, etc. etc…
'The room,' Louise said, looking at him obliquely, 'is full of girls who used to go around with you. Or maybe 'used to' isn't exactly what I mean.'
'Parties these days,' Michael said, 'are getting too crowded. I'm not coming to them any more. Isn't there some place you and I can go and sit and hold hands quietly?'
'We can try,' Louise said, and took his arm and led him down the hallway through the groups of guests, towards the rear of the apartment. Louise opened a door and looked in. The room was dark and she motioned Michael to follow. They tiptoed in, closed the door carefully behind them and sank on to a small couch. After the bright lights in the other rooms, Michael couldn't see anything here for a moment. He closed his eyes luxuriously, feeling Louise snuggle close to him, lean over and softly kiss his cheek.
'Now,' she said, 'isn't that better?'
The rest of the evening was confused in Michael's mind. Later on he didn't remember whether he had made a date with Louise for Tuesday afternoon or not, or whether Laura had told him that the fortune-teller had predicted they were going to be divorced or not. But he remembered seeing Arney appear at the other end of the room, smiling a little, whisky dribbling down from his mouth on his chin. Arney, with his head slightly to one side, as though his neck was stiff, came walking, quite steadily, through the room, ignoring the other guests who were standing there, and came up next to Michael. He stood there, wavering for a moment, in front of the tall french window, then threw open the window and started to step out. His coat caught on a lamp. He stopped to disentangle it, and started out again. Michael watched him and knew that he should rush over and grab him. He felt himself starting to move sluggishly, his arms and legs dream-like and light, although he knew that if he didn't move faster the playwright would be through the window and falling eleven storeys before he could reach him.
Michael heard the quick scuff of shoes behind him. A man leaped past him and took the playwright in his arms. The two figures teetered dangerously on the edge, with the reflection of the night lights of New York a heavy red neon glow on the clouds outside. The window was slammed shut by someone else and they were safe. Then Michael saw that it was Parrish, who had been half-way across the room at the bar, who had come past him to save the playwright.
Laura was in Michael's arms, hiding her eyes, weeping. He was annoyed at her for being so useless and so demanding at a moment like that, and he was glad he could be annoyed at her because it kept him from thinking about how he had failed, although he knew he wouldn't be able to avoid thinking about it later. He wanted to go home, but Laura said she was hungry, and somehow they were in a crowd of people and somebody had a car and everybody sat on everybody else's lap and he was relieved when they drew up to the big, garish restaurant on Madison Avenue and he could get out of the crowded car.
They sat down in a shrill, orange room with paintings of Indians for some reason all over the walls, and inexperienced waiters, hastily pressed into emergency service, stumbling erratically among the loud, still- celebrating diners. Michael felt drunk, his eyelids drooping with wooden insistence over his eyes. He didn't talk because he felt himself stuttering when he tried. He stared around him, his mouth curled in what he thought was lordly scorn for the world around him. Louise was at the table, he suddenly noticed, with her husband. And Wade, he noticed, sitting next to Louise, holding her hand. Michael's head began to clear and ache at the same time. He ordered a hamburger and a bottle of beer.
This is disgraceful, he thought heavily, disgraceful. Ex-girls, ex-beaux, ex-nothing. Was it Tuesday afternoon he was to meet Louise, or Wednesday? And what afternoon was Wade to meet Laura? A nest of snakes hibernating for the winter, Arney had said. He was a silly, broken man, Arney, but he wasn't wrong there. There was no honour to this life, no form… Martinis, beer, brandy, Scotch, have another, and everything disappeared in a blur of alcohol – decency, fidelity, courage, decision. Parrish had to be the one to jump across the room. Automatically. Danger, therefore jump. Michael had been right there, next to the window, and he had hardly moved, a small indecisive shuffling – no more. There he'd stood, too fat, too much liquor, too many attachments, a wife who was practically a stranger, darting in from Hollywood for a week at a time, full of that talk, doing God knows what with how many other men on those balmy, orange-scented, California evenings, while he frittered away the years of his youth, drifting with the easy tide of the theatre, making a little money, being content, never making the bold move… He was thirty years old and this was 1938. Unless he wanted to be driven to the same window as Arney, he had better take hold.
He got up and mumbled, 'Excuse me,' and started through the crowded restaurant towards the men's room. Take hold, he said to himself, take hold. Divorce Laura, live a rigorous, ascetic life, live as he had when he was twenty, just ten years ago, when things were clear and honourable, and when you faced a new year, you weren't sick with yourself for the one just passed.
He went down the steps to the men's room. It would start right here. He'd soak his head with ice-cold water for ten minutes. The pale sweat would be washed off, the flush would die from his cheeks, his hair would be cool and in order on his head, he would look out across the new year with clearer eyes… He opened the door to the men's room, and went to the washbowls and looked at himself with loathing in the mirror, at the slack face, the conniving eyes, the weak, indecisive mouth. He remembered how he had looked at twenty. Tough, thin, alive, uncompromising… That face was still there, he felt, buried beneath the unpleasant face reflected in the mirror. He would quarry his old face out from the unsightly outcroppings of the years between.
He ducked his head and splashed the icy water on his eyelids and cheeks. He dried himself, his skin tingling pleasantly. Refreshed, he walked soberly up the steps to rejoin the others at the big table in the centre of the noisy room.
CHAPTER THREE
ON the western edge of America, in the sea-coast town of Santa Monica, among the flat, sprawling streets and the shredding palms, the old year was coming to an end in soft, grey fog, rolling in off the oily water, rolling in over the scalloped surf breaking on the wet beaches, rolling in over the hot-dog stands, closed for the winter, and the homes of the movie stars, and the muffled coast road that led to Mexico and Oregon.
