A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion

“What a good idea,” Ruth said, as if it were idiotic. “So festive.”

Josephine slapped her wrist. “Don’t take that tone with your husband.”

“What tone?”

Josephine settled more deeply in the seat. “You know very well, May.”

Albert ignored his wife, shifted into third gear, and smiled as he hummed the tune from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, his cue for his daughter to sing the aria he’d taught her.

She thought a little and sang in Italian the opening verses of “O mio babbino caro.”

Ruth interrupted. “Is that a lullaby, baby?”

Lorraine said, “A girl is telling her papa she’s in love with a handsome boy and she wants to get a wedding ring.”

Albert said in his teacherly way, “Mio babbino caro means ‘my dear papa.’ Lovely melody, isn’t it? And if she can’t have him, she’ll throw herself into the river Arno.” Albert jumped to the end of the aria and Lorraine laughed as she joined her father in singing the Italian.

Ruth said, “Well, I feel left out. How about you, Ma?”

“The lyrics mean ‘Oh God, I want to die,’” Albert said, and grinned into the rearview mirror. “Remember when Florence Easton first sang it at the Metropolitan Opera? In 1918? Were you with me?”

“I hate opera,” Ruth said.

“Oh, that’s right,” he said, and then he was stonily silent the rest of the way to Jamaica Station. And he continued to say nothing, as if he were hurt, when Ruth and Lorraine slid out of the Buick Eight and he headed west with Josephine to Kew Gardens.

The nine-year-old watched as the family car growled away. She asked, “Was Daddy mad at us?”

“Oh, he’s just moody,” Ruth said. “Daddy’s fine.”

Ambling into the downtown Elks lodge, Judd offered a fraternal hello to Chester, the porter, and was cheered that he was remembered from earlier visits to Syracuse. Straddling a bar stool, Judd ordered a gin martini with two green olives, then held the folded blue handkerchief to his nose, a hint of sweet chloroform in its newness. He avoided his face in the wide and distorting mirror that doubled the liquor array. Within a minute he was ordering another martini. He heard the clack of billiard balls in the adjoining room and when he’d gotten the martini, he heard some men protesting a card play. Judd tipsily twirled on his stool like Jane or Lorraine would have and saw at the far end of the lounge four men in their shirtsleeves and ties at a green felt table, earnestly listening as one of them announced the scores thus far in a gin rummy game. Each of them seemed so normal, the salt of the earth. But bored and boring, old before his time, and vaguely irritated with his lot in life. Like he was before Ruth May.

Judd turned back to the bar to order a third martini and announced his intention by saying, “You know, sometimes too much to drink isn’t enough.” But the bartender was avoiding him as he inventoried his cityscape of liquor, his pencil tinking each bottle as he counted it.

So there was nothing for Judd to do but chain-smoke Sweet Caporals in the gentlemen’s club room at the Onondaga. An RCA radio with a gooseneck loudspeaker was tuned to New York City’s WRNY and a soprano named Nita Nadine was singing. A few other commercial salesmen he’d noticed in weeks past were loudly there, but he feared he might give something away if he joined in their conversation. At twelve thirty he requested permission to tune the radio to WEAF for the Waldorf-Astoria Orchestra and forced himself to ignore the night’s scheme by recalling the luxury of so many glorious nights at the Waldorf-Astoria with his lover. And then he thought of their first time. July, was it? In the offices of Benjamin & Johnes. She’d had a sunburn; he took her upstairs. She’d said, I feel like a child on an escapade. And he’d said, We’re not doing anything wrong.

At one, he went upstairs to room 743, and he nestled inside his tan leather briefcase the half-pint of Duncan’s Pure Chloroform and the green rubber chemist’s gloves he’d bought in Kingston, the navy blue farmer’s handkerchief he’d gotten that morning, and a wreath of circled picture wire he’d stolen from the New York office. And he was just snapping the briefcase shut when Haddon Jones rapped on the door with his familiar shave-and-a-haircut, six-bits.

The hotel’s basement coffee shop seemed just fine to him.

Each ordered black coffee and a sandwich of fried ham on rye. Initially, Judd talked about the Benjamin & Johnes Company and his new financial interest in it. Judd called it fractional ownership and he loaned Haddon his gold Cross mechanical pencil so his high school friend could jot arithmetic on a paper napkin to guess Judd’s probable increase in earnings and his need for wider insurance coverage. But Haddon heard himself selling, lost interest in his estimates, and handed the Cross pencil back, and the shop was silent except for the waitress sawing a fresh loaf of bread.

Although tempted to confide his night’s plans, Judd presumed nothing could alter his path and he’d only make his friend a co-conspirator, so he sought instead just an alibi. “Say, Had,” Judd finally said. “I need you to do me a favor.”

His friend sighed and said, “Ho boy,” but he was smiling.

“Nothing strenuous, just a little manly deception. A fib.”

Haddon’s hazel eyes were wolfish. “You going to get yourself some nookie?”

“Remains to be seen. Remember that photograph I showed you once? The blonde?”

“Oh yeah. Her? She’s a doll!”

“We’re meeting in Albany tonight.”

“You rascal.”

Judd fetched a hotel key from his pocket and slid it next to Haddon’s plate. Aware of the usefulness of seeming a dunce at adultery, Judd said, “Don’t want the firm or Isabel to suspect, so I’m hoping you’ll mail some letters for me. So I’ll have the night postmarks on them. And would you phone the front desk to say I’m sick? And hang out the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign? Also, toss the room a little before the hotel maid shows up Sunday morning. I’m afraid you’ll have to make two trips just in case housekeeping gets too helpful.”