The Listening Walls (14 page)

“I don't know anything about boats.” Miss Burton's voice was cold and cautious. “Not a thing.”

“Neither do I, really. I went sailing once on the Bay with my husband. Years ago, just the two of us. Gill was the skipper and I was supposed to be the crew. God, it was awful. I was scared to begin with, because I can't swim very well, and then a strong wind came up and Gill began shouting orders at me. Only I couldn't understand them, they sounded like a foreign language or a child's gibber­ish—ready about, hard alee, jibe ho. Gill explained them all to me afterwards, but at the time I felt such terrible confusion, as if some immediate and urgent action was expected of me but I couldn't understand what. That's the way I feel now, right this minute. There's a strong wind, there's danger, I should be doing something. But I don't know what. The orders sound like gibberish, I can't even tell where they're coming from. And I can't get off the boat. Can you?”

“I haven't tried.”

“And you won't try?”

“No. It's too late.”

“Then we'd better get our signals straight,” Helene said bluntly. “Don't you agree?”

“I guess so.”

“Where's Rupert?”

“I told you, he wasn't feeling well, he went home.”

“Straight home?”

“He may have stopped for lunch. He always eats at the same place at noon, Lassiter's, on Market Street, near Kearny.”

Lassiter's was a moderately priced bar and grill that catered to the men of the financial district. They were a martini crowd, consisting of third vice-presidents, sales managers, West Coast representatives, all of them known as executives, a word which meant nothing except that it entitled them to a two-hour lunch.

She spotted Rupert immediately, sitting at the counter with a bottle of beer and a hamburger in front of him, both untouched. An open paperback book was propped against the beer bottle, and he was staring at it but not reading it. He looked tense and expectant, as if he was waiting for someone he didn't like or something he didn't want to face.

When she touched him lightly on the shoulder he jumped and the book fell on its side and the beer bottle teetered.

She said, “Aren't you going to eat your lunch?”

“No.”

“I hate to see anything wasted.”

“Help yourself.”

He got up and she took his place at the counter and reached for the hamburger without embarrassment or self-consciousness.

He stood behind her while she ate. “What are you do­ing here, Helene?”

“Miss Burton told me you usually had lunch at this place so I came over and here you are.”

“And now what?”

She spoke quickly and quietly so the man on the next stool wouldn't overhear. “Gill just had a phone call. From Dodd. I'm sure it was about you and some money. I could only hear Gill's part of the conversation and not much of that. He asked me to wait outside so I couldn't hear any more, but I think he's going to meet Dodd late this afternoon. They may be planning some kind of show­down.”

“About the money?”

“I guess so.”

“They have no grounds.”

The man on the next stool paid his check and left, and Rupert sat down in his place.

“Listen,” Helene said. “I've got to know more about this. I've put myself in a bad position trying to defend you. I want to be reassured that I'm doing the right thing.”

“You are.”

“What money was Dodd talking about?”

“I cashed a check on Amy's account, using her power of attorney.”

“Why?”

“Why do people cash checks? Because they need money.”

“No, I meant why all the fuss on Dodd's part, and Gill's? Gill said it was legal but that someone should have stopped you, under the circumstances.”

“No one could have stopped me. No one even has the right to question me about it. As a matter of fact, whatever employee of the bank informed Dodd about the check was guilty of improper conduct. Dodd holds no offi­cial position, and private records shouldn't be open to him.”

“What's he like?”

“I don't know. I've never met him.”

“Miss Burton has,” she said, with deliberation. “Last night.”

He tried to look indifferent. She could see his face in the mirror behind the counter, trying on various expres­sions none of which seemed to fit. He said finally, “So she couldn't keep her mouth shut.”

“She didn't intend to tell me anything, don't be hard on her. She thought I'd come to the office as a spy for the great Brandon-Dodd combine. That's a laugh, isn't it?” She pushed away the empty plate with an expression of distaste as if she'd suddenly decided that she hadn't been hungry after all and now regretted eating the hamburger. “Miss Burton's in love with you, I suppose you know that.”

“No, I don't!” he said sharply. “You're imagin­ing . . .”

“It's time you found out, then. It's written all over her, Rupert. I feel rather bad about it.”

“Why should you?”

“Oh, empathy, I guess. It's happened to me too, being in love with someone who hardly noticed me. That was years ago, of course,” she added quickly. “Before I met Gill.”

“Of course.”

“Are you in a hurry?”

“Why?”

“You keep looking at that clock on the wall.”

“Well, I have to get back to the office pretty soon.”

“I thought you weren't going back to the office this afternoon.”

“What gave you that idea?”

“Miss Burton.”

“Miss Burton,” he said easily, “almost managed to con­vince me I wasn't feeling well and should go home. The fact is, I'm fine and I intend to spend the afternoon work­ing.” He swung round on the stool as if he intended to get up and leave. Instead, after a second's hesitation, he com­pleted the full circle and faced the counter again. “Let's have some coffee, eh?”

The maneuver would have been obvious even if she hadn't already been suspicious of him. By tilting her head slightly, Helene could see in the mirror the reflection of the entrance door. A young woman had just come in and was surveying the room with an air of anxiety. She was well built and pretty, dressed in a skin tight woolen suit, a feathered hat, half a dozen strings of colored glass beads, and patent leather pumps with heels so high that she stood at a forward angle as if she were bucking a high wind. When she put up her hand to adjust the feathered hat over her blond curls, a platinum wedding band gleamed under the lights.

“She's rather pretty,” Helene said.

“Who is?”

“The young woman by the door. She appears to be looking for someone.”

“I hadn't noticed.”

“Well, notice now.”

“Why should I?”

“Oh, you might be interested. She is. She's coming your way.”

“She can't be. I've never seen her before in my life.”

Rupert turned and gave the girl a long, cold, deliber­ate stare. She stopped abruptly, then headed for the cigarette machine, moving with little wobbly steps on the high, narrow heels. Helene noticed that her feet were proportionately larger than the rest of her, very wide and flat, as if she'd spent a considerable period of her life walking barefoot. When she had fished the cigarettes out of the trough, the girl put them in her black patent leather handbag and walked toward the exit. One of the men sitting at a table gave a low whistle as she passed, but she paid no attention, as if she hadn't heard the sound or didn't know what it meant or for whom it was intended.

“I think she's a farm girl,” Helene said. “That getup looks like something she's copied from a movie maga­zine. I suppose you might call her a blonde with a good tan or a brunette with a good bleach job, depending on your viewpoint.”

“I have no viewpoint. I don't know the woman.”

“She's probably one of the secretaries in your office building and has a mad, mad crush on you.”

“You're being ridiculous. I'm not the type of man women get crushes on.”

“Oh, but you are. You make a perfectly splendid father image, firm but kindly, strong but gentle, that sort of thing. It's fatal—for a girl that age. How old would you say she is? Twenty-two? Twenty-five?”

“I haven't thought about it and don't intend to.”

“Years and years younger than Miss Burton, anyway, wouldn't you say?”

“Stop playing games.”

Helene smiled. “I like games. If I didn't, I wouldn't be here. It's kind of amusing, isn't it, Gill and Dodd sniffing around like a pair of nervous bloodhounds and me trying to put them off the scent? Your scent.”

“Why are you trying?”

“I told you, I like games.”

“I like games too, when the grand prize isn't my own skin. This is the second time you've warned me about Gill's activities. What's your real reason, Helene?”

“It's too complicated to explain.”

“Don't explain, then,” he said.

“I won't.”

“I want to thank you, anyway, for all the trouble you've gone to.”

“You're welcome. At least I think you're welcome. I don't know. I—I'm beginning to feel like a traitor. I'd like to be reassured that I'm not, that I've done the right thing in coming here.”

“You've done the right thing,” he said gravely. “Thank you again, Helene. Someday, perhaps soon, Amy will be here to thank you too.”

“Amy? Soon?”

“I hope so.”

“She's coming back?”

“Of course she's coming back. What made you think she wasn't?”

“Nothing—special.”

“Maybe by Thanksgiving, or at least by Christmas, we'll all be together again. Everything will be the same as it always was.”

“The same,” she repeated dully. “Of course. Precisely the same.”

Precisely. Inevitably. Irrevocably.

She rose, one hand pressed against her mouth to stifle a sound she could never let anyone else hear.

Later, when she was asked, she couldn't remember ex­actly how she spent the next couple of hours. She recalled walking along many streets, staring into the windows of shops and the faces of strangers. For a long, or a little, time she sat on a bench in Union Square watching sad-eyed old men feed bread crumbs and popcorn to the pigeons. The pigeons were plump and sleek and did not resemble Amy at all, but Helene drew back in protest when one of them came too close to her foot. She was repelled by its dependence, its insistent docility, which it seemed to be forcing on her.
Amy. Amy again. By Thanksgiving. Or Christmas. No hope of never.

It started to rain lightly and the old men abandoned their benches and ambled off to shelter. Helene put on her gloves and rose, ready to leave, when she saw the girl from Lassiter's grill entering the Square from Powell Street. She had no idea whether the girl would recognize her or whether it would be important if she did, but simply as a precaution she picked up a discarded newspa­per from the grass and held it in front of her as a spying shield.

She thought at first that the girl was alone and that the man walking parallel to her was just about to pass her and be on his own way. He didn't pass. He kept right on walking beside her but at a distance, as if the two of them were in the midst or the aftermath of a quarrel. They approached the bench where Helene sat hidden behind the limp newspaper, with the pigeons cooing and coaxing at her feet.

The man had the same startling color contrast as the girl, very light hair and deeply tanned skin. They might have been brother and sister. The man was the older of the two, perhaps in his early thirties. There were clearly defined laugh lines around his eyes and mouth, but he wasn't laughing. He looked pale under his tan, and feeble under the loud plaid sport coat. Helene had never seen him before but she remembered others like him. Years ago during the depression in Oakland, her way to school led her past a poolroom where jobless young men used to hang out for lack of anything better to do. On their faces, in their posture, they all shared a com­mon expression, not bitter or angry, but listless, as if they hadn't expected much anyway. The man in the plaid coat wore the same expression.

The farm girl and the poolroom buff. They looked out of place in the Square and with each other. She couldn't imagine what connection either of them could have with Rupert. I must have been mistaken, she thought. Rupert was telling me the truth when he said he didn't know the girl, had never seen her before. He's probably been telling the truth about everything. Sus­picion is contagious. I caught it from Gill.

It was nearly four o'clock when she returned to Gill's office and found him with his topcoat on and his briefcase under his arm, ready to depart.