“I’d be in the way.”
“Nonsense. Peter wants to hear your reactions. Come on, we’ve got a limousine waiting outside.”
“Is Mrs. Lemberg going?”
“Of course.”
“Well, I won’t be the only female, anyway, then. Sure, I’d love to.”
With five men and Mrs. Lemberg crowded in the limousine, Marjorie felt fairly safe going to Noel’s hotel. Peter Ferris, the producer, was a remarkably handsome man, younger than Noel. His grace and his smooth manners reminded Marjorie of her actor friends; but unlike them he seemed to possess sharp intelligence, and a high charge of energy. Mrs. Lemberg frankly doted on him. He cross-examined Marjorie about the show in a good-humored brisk way, and her answers pleased him. “This girl’s not only charming and pretty, she knows the theatre,” he said to Noel. “You’d better marry her.”
“That’s what she says.”
Marjorie blushed to her ears, everyone laughed, and Noel gave her a hug. The discussion of the show went on, and Marjorie was surprised at the sophistication of Mrs. Lemberg. She looked like one of her mother’s temple sisterhood friends in her puffball of a mink coat, and her voice sounded like theirs, but she was bright and hard-boiled.
Marjorie made a much-appreciated contribution early in the conference at Noel’s suite. A new comic song was needed, everyone had agreed, shortly before the end of the second act. The men were trying to think of a topic for the song; they were sprawled around the room—on the couch, across chairs, on the floor, in their shirtsleeves, some with shoes off. Mrs. Lemberg meantime placidly played solitaire on a coffee table, her diamonds winking in the lamplight. The silence grew long. Marjorie worked up her courage, and bashfully remarked to Noel that he might be able to use a certain duet from one of the old South Wind revues. Noel frowned, then jumped up and walked to the spinet piano. “By God, I’d completely forgotten that one. Listen to it, Peter. It might work, at that. Do you remember the words, Marge?” Marjorie remembered every word of every song of Noel’s. She went to the piano and sang, acting out both parts with gestures and dance steps from Noel’s original staging.
They gave her a little round of applause. “Gad, let’s put her in the show, she’s better than the leading lady we’ve got,” Ferris said. “Noel, I think it’s good. The words need some work, but let’s try it. Marjorie, I appoint you permanent staff consultant on the contents of Noel’s trunk. Let’s have a drink on it.”
Noel had just finished pouring very dark-looking highballs when the Chinese food came. They all drank up quickly, while the Chinese messenger dished the food. It was quite a supper. A plate of sliced pink pork was part of the buffet, along with egg rolls, chow mein, fried lobster, and rice. Marjorie had become quite free about the food she ate; but she had never yet deliberately helped herself to pork, though she had suspected more than once that she was eating it, and had gone on eating. It occurred to her now, when she saw little Mrs. Lemberg piling pork on her plate, that it was high time she shrugged off these hypocritical little distinctions of hers. She took a couple of pork slices; and by dipping them completely in mustard sauce she got them down without any trouble. Eating the pork gave her an odd sense of freedom, and at the same time, though she suppressed it, a twinge of disgust. She asked Noel for another highball.
After the Chinese food the conference grew long, and rather blurry. Marjorie wandered around the suite, washed her face in cold water in the bathroom, and glanced through heavily blue-pencilled scripts of Princess Jones lying scattered in the bedroom on the double bed. There was also a worn volume of W. S. Gilbert’s librettos. She took the book into the living room, and scanned the pages of The Mikado while the talk went on, thinking of her stage debut at Hunter, and of her early friendship with Marsha Zelenko. After a while, she put aside the book and went to the window. Noel’s suite was on the twenty-sixth floor. Far up the park she could see the twin towers of the El Dorado. The rain had stopped, and the low clouds were breaking up. A blue-white full moon, almost overhead, was sailing rapidly through the clouds.
Marsha’s wedding at the El Dorado seemed to Marjorie to have happened not a few hours ago, but last week or last month. The whole business already was fading: the gray-headed little husband, the theremin, the Packovitch girls, Milton Schwartz, and Marsha’s wild tirade before the ceremony. The present moment, here in Noel’s hotel suite, meshed smoothly with the old days—before the break over Imogene, before the brief era of Morris Shapiro. It was so natural and right to be back with Noel! The period of estrangement was a queer isolated fragment of her life. She did not feel at all drunk, only a little tired, and more than a little exhilarated and tense.
The conference broke up at ten minutes of two. Ferris offered to drive Marjorie home. Noel, shoeless, in shirtsleeves and with his collar open, said, “Thanks, Peter, I’ll throw on a tie and take the lady to her door myself.”
“You needn’t bother. I’ll go with them,” Marjorie said, starting to get out of a low armchair.
“Nonsense, stay where you are. I’ll get a reputation as a cad,” Noel said.
The others said goodbye. Mrs. Lemberg was the last to go. She hesitated a moment in the hallway, looked from Noel to Marjorie, then laughed and said in a kind but faintly metallic tone, “Don’t work too hard, Noel. Goodbye, Marjorie dear.” The cynical twang in a voice so much like her mother’s stung Marjorie. She pushed herself out of the chair, but Mrs. Lemberg had already closed the door.
Noel went into the bedroom, and came out a few moments later sliding a maroon tie under his collar. He said nothing. He seemed embarrassed. He knotted the tie at a mirror in the hallway. Marjorie walked up and down the living room, not very aware of what she was doing. The walls were papered with a design of yellow and green flowers on gray. Her image moved back and forth in a large oblong mirror between the windows.
Noel said from the hallway, “Well, was it fun?”
“I loved it. Thanks for inviting me.”
“You were very helpful.”
“That old duet just crossed my mind. Lucky.”
“Tired?”
“Not at all, strangely. I suppose I’ll collapse once I take my clothes off.”
“Like another drink before we go?” He was putting on his tweed jacket.
“I—no, thanks, I’d better not. I swear I’m becoming a drunkard.”
“Sure? There’s plenty of soda and ice.”
“No, thanks. I’d better go home.” She glanced at her watch. “Ye gods. How did it get to be this time?”
He said, “I’ll probably work on that number when I come back. I’ve never been more wide awake. How about writing down the words for me before we go?”
“I’ll be glad to, but look, Noel, I can go home by myself after that. You have too much to do—”
“Forget it. I like your company, you fool, don’t you know that?” He took a pencil and a yellow pad from the piano. “Will you dictate the words? It’s marvelous how you remember that junk. I’ve written reams of it, but the words never stick with me, just the melodies.”
Marjorie sat beside him on the sofa. He poised the pencil over the pad. She stared at him, and after a second or two she said, “What on earth is the matter with me? It’s gone clean out of my head.”
“What!”
“Every word of it. Clean gone.”
“Margie, you sang it from beginning to end an hour ago.”
“I don’t know what’s happened. Amnesia, I guess.” She shook her head violently. “Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. Is it nerves? Or what? I can’t even think of the first lines, Noel.”
“Well, I remember those—
She was chic, her smile was winning,
It was a very gay beginning—”
Marjorie stammered and groped for the words. “Maybe if you play the music again—”
Noel went to the piano, giving her the pencil and pad. As soon as he played a few measures, the verses came to her in a rush. She shouted them
aloud in relief, and scribbled them down, laughing. “Whew! I was beginning to think I’d lost my mind.”
“You’d better have that drink, after all.”
“I believe I will.”
She lounged at the piano, picking out the melody with one finger. He brought the drinks and sat beside her on the bench. “Not a bad little piano, is it? Rented.”
“It reminds me of the one in Sam Rothmore’s office.”
“Dear old Sam. Let’s drink to Sam.” He raised his glass. “Pity it isn’t twenty-year-old brandy in his honor, but here’s to the fine old bastard anyway.”
She said, “Do you ever see him?”
“Sam’s pretty sick, Margie. He lives in Florida the year round now. He’s pretty much been put out to pasture.”
“One of the few real friends you’ve ever had.”
“I know. Worse luck for him.” Noel put his drink on the piano, and played the love song from the show in an idle way. “Do you really like Princess Jones, Marge?”
“You know I do. I always have. I can’t help liking it. It’s superb, Noel, truly it is.”
“Maybe I’m too close to it. Tonight—and it’s happened a couple of times before, during rehearsals—it all seemed a bit thin and banal. Beautiful production, not much show. I’ve told this to Peter. He says if I didn’t have these depressions I wouldn’t be a healthy author.”
Marjorie laughed.
Noel said, “Well, we’ll have a few weeks with audiences out of town for polishing and tightening. The Variety write-up will be useful.” His fingers rambled into the tune Marjorie had suggested. “This melody’s really not bad, do you know?” he said. “Probably a lot of the South Wind stuff will be salvageable some day.”
“It’s a treasure house, Noel, I’m telling you.”
He began to play the old songs. She leaned on the piano, humming, sipping her drink. She closed her eyes. Scenes of their summer days together came sharp and clear in her mind—dancing in the darkened social hall at the end of an evening’s canoeing in the moonlight; eating lunch at hot noonday in a dining hall full of noisy guests, with the perspiring band playing these songs in a cockloft over the kitchen; walking with Noel through fragrant woods at night; making up on Saturday night for the show, in the dressing room with the windows painted streaky blue, at the mirror cracked like a spider web… She opened her eyes, and laughed. “What’s that one? Moon Madness, isn’t it?”
“Right.”
“First song of yours I ever heard. You were rehearsing it the night Marsha and I sneaked over from the girls’ camp. Remember?”
He looked up at her, grinning as he played. “I thought you were a pleasant-looking child.”
“I thought you were Apollo. Do you still have that black sweater? I hated the blonde who sang that number, because Marsha said she was your girl. Now I can’t remember her name.”
“Neither can I.”
She reached down and struck his hands from the keyboard, as he modulated to another melody. “Don’t play that.”
He was wryly amused. “Really? After all this time?”
“Oh well. You’re right. I can’t walk around forever afraid of a song. Play the damned thing.”
She turned away, arms folded, and went to the window. The clouds were gone. It was a glittering starry moonlit night. The buildings were all dark, save for a spot of yellow window here and there. The moon on the Hudson was very like the moon on the lake at South Wind. He was playing the waltz. The terrible night came back on her, as real as the room: the smell of the dewy trees, the splash of the fountain, and Samson-Aaron on the grass with his mouth open, trickling water from his Palm Beach suit. She gritted her teeth, faced Noel, and laughed. “Surprisingly, I don’t mind it after all. Nothing like getting these things out of your system. I believe I’ll go home.”
He slid his fingers along the keyboard, came to her; he put his arm around her shoulders. They looked out at the moonlight together. He stared at the sky, craning his neck, and then pointed at the moon. “Yes, of course, I clean forgot. I think it’s starting. There’s an eclipse of the moon tonight, the paper said. Look at the left side of that moon, will you? Isn’t it getting sort of dark red and queer?”
“I thought the moon blacked out in an eclipse,” Marjorie said, peering in awe at the discolored moon. “I’ve never seen an eclipse of the moon.”
Noel smiled. “It can’t black out. The earth’s air diffuses the sunlight. You just get a dull red color.”
“Walking encyclopedia,” Marjorie said. “Well, this is the opportunity of a lifetime, isn’t it? Perfect view, perfect night. Let’s watch the eclipse, by all means.”
“It takes a couple of hours, dear.”
Marjorie laughed. “How long before it’s total, d’you suppose?”
“I don’t know. Quarter, half hour, maybe.”
“Well, why don’t you just go and rewrite your duet? I’ll watch till it’s total, maybe. If I get bored I’ll go home.”
Noel returned to the piano. For about ten minutes he played fragments of the melody and scrawled on the pad. Marjorie sat on the arm of a chair, looking out at the eclipse. The coppery color crawled very slowly across the face of the moon. Now and then she glanced at Noel. Sometimes she found his eyes on her. She finished her drink and put down the glass. He stood. “I’ll get you another.”
“Positively not. Eclipse is getting there, all right. I’ll have a cigarette, and then I’ll go home. And you’re not taking me home, either. I’ll leave you to wrestle with the muse.”
He brought her a cigarette, lit it, and embraced her waist with one arm. She leaned against him. They looked at the dulling moon, his cheek against her hair. After a while he said in a troubled voice, “Pretty slow kind of show, at that, an eclipse of the moon.”
“It does lack something in the way of entertainment,” Marjorie said, her voice shaking too.
He turned her around by the shoulders. It was a terrific release to kiss Noel. She broke away from him long enough to murmur, “It’s been a very very long time, hasn’t it?” They kissed again, with more passion.
Without a word he went to the hallway, and came back with her coat. “No doubt I’m being an imbecile, I’m throwing you out. Here’s your coat. I love you. Good night. See you soon.”
Marjorie slowly smiled, and shrugged. She started to put one arm into a sleeve. Then the coat was on the floor, and Noel was straining her to him until only her toes touched the floor. After kissing her furiously on the mouth, the eyes, the ears, the forehead, he said, “You don’t exactly want me to work, do you?”
She said something, she didn’t know what. He was leading her by the hand to the sofa, and she was following.
At one point, as they necked—she was quite defenseless against him, and quite without desire to defend herself—she murmured, “What about the redheaded chorus girl? Isn’t she all you want?”
He said, “If you mean a kid named Carol, I took her once to dinner with Marsha and Lou. She’s not quite you, unfortunately. That’s always the trouble.”
Soon they sat up, straightening their disarranged clothes. He took her face in his hands, kissed her on the mouth, and said huskily, “Well, now, Marjorie, my dear sweet love, this isn’t what grown people do, is it? You’ve grown up, haven’t you, at long last? I wonder. I think you have. Have you grown up?”
They stared at each other for a very long time. Marjorie’s gesture at last was not even a nod; it was a slight, a very slight, ashamed dip of the head. It didn’t seem to her she willed the movement; it happened. Then she tossed her head and laughed. “If you really think it’s such a good idea.”
He said, his face flushed and eager, “God knows I’ve always thought so.”
“You devil. You’ve always known I would, too.”
He stood and pulled her up by a hand. When he took a step toward the bedroom she held back; then she followed him.
Something happened at the bedroom door when he snapped on the light. It mi
ght have been the sight of the bed piled with papers; or of the open bathroom door, with the toilet beyond; it might have been that the overhead bedroom lights glared after the indirect glow in the living room, and shocked her eyes. The mood broke. She stood leaning in the doorway, while he agitatedly cleared away the books, scripts, and papers on the bed. He seemed comical to her in his excitement, as other men usually did, even though he was Noel; comical and boyish.
He tumbled the collected stuff in a heap in a chair, and turned to her. His arms dropped to his sides. “What’s so funny, my love?”
She said, “You, my love.”
He smiled. “The snorting pawing male, eh? Yes, indeed. Well, come on.”
The smile faded from her face. She saw now something she had not noticed for a year and a half. She saw that his left arm hung crookedly. He held out his arms and came toward her. She said hurriedly, “Do you have a robe? Let me have it.”
He gave her a yellow-and-red silk robe. She went into the bathroom, and as she closed the door she heard him kick off his shoes.
She looked at herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the door, in the white glare of the bathroom, and wondered in a vague way whether this girl she saw before her, Marjorie Morgenstern, this girl in the familiar blue dress with the gray trim, was really about to take off that dress in a man’s apartment and lose her virginity. She wondered whether it would hurt. She felt detached, cold, and amused. Her teeth kept baring in a smile. She took off her shoes and then pulled off the dress over her head, in the same way she always took it off before going to sleep. Habit was so strong that she wanted to remove her smeared makeup—what was left of it, after the necking. But this seemed too cool and methodical a thing to do; no doubt hotel chambermaids were used to cosmetic smears on bed linen. She wondered how much of her clothing it was proper to take off. She was quite sure she couldn’t go back naked to Noel. The question was, what was decently indecent for a girl of twenty-one, doing this for the first time? She took off her stockings and some of her underclothing. She kept on her slip, and hugged the robe around her as she combed her hair with his big black comb. Regretting that she hadn’t brought her purse in with her, she considered dashing out and getting it, because she really needed powder and a touch of lipstick. But she was sure Noel would be offended at her appearing and disappearing again. Obviously she was to emerge, throw herself into his eager arms, and abandon all to love.