Virginia Slims . . . Doral . . . Merit . . . Merit 100s . . . Camels . . .
Camel Filters . . . Camel Lights.
Later – around the time I was starting to see the last three or four months of our marriage in a clearer light, as a matter of fact I began to understand that my decision to quit smoking when I had was perhaps not so unconsidered as it at first seemed, and a very long way from ill-considered. I’m not a brilliant man, not a brave one, either, but that decision might have been both. It’s certainly possible; sometimes we rise above ourselves. In any case, it gave my mind something concrete to pitch upon in the days after Diane left; it gave my misery a vocabulary it would not otherwise have had, if you see what I mean. Very likely you don’t, but I can’t think of any other way to put it.
Have I speculated that quitting when I did may have played a part in what happened at the Gotham Cafe that day? Of course I have. .
. but I haven’t lost any sleep over it. None of us can predict the final outcomes of our actions, after all, and few even try; most of us just do what we do to prolong a moment’s pleasure or to stop the pain for a while. And even when we act for the noblest reasons, the last link of the chain all too often drips with someone’s blood.
Humboldt called me again two weeks after the evening when I’d bombed West 83rd Street with my cigarettes, and this time he stuck with Mr Davis as a form of address. He asked me how I was doing, and I cold him I was doing fine. With that amenity our of the way, he told me that he had called on Diane’s behalf. Diane, he said, wanted to sit down with me and discuss ‘certain aspects’ of the marriage- I suspected that ‘certain aspects’ meant the key to the safe deposit box – not to mention various other financial issues Diane might want to investigate before hauling her lawyer onstage
– but what my head knew and what my body was doing were completely different things. I could feel my skin flush and my heart speed up; I could feel a pulse tapping away in the wrist of the hand holding the phone. You have to remember that I hadn’t seen her since the morning of the day she’d left, and even then I hadn’t really seen her; she’d been sleeping with her face buried in her pillow.
Still I retained enough sense to ask him just what aspects we were talking about here.
Humboldt chuckled fatly in my ear and said he would rather save that for our actual meeting.
‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’ I asked. As a question, it was nothing but a time-buyer- I knew it wasn’t a good idea. I also knew I was going to do it. I wanted to see her again. Felt I had to see her again.
‘Oh, yes, I think so.’ At once, no hesitation. Any question that Humboldt and Diane had worked this out very carefully between them (and yes, very likely with a lawyer’s advice) evaporated. ‘It’s always best to let some time pass before bringing the principals together, a little cooling-off period, but in my judgment a face-to-face meeting at this time would facilitate—‘
‘Let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘You’re talking about—‘
‘Lunch,’ he said. ‘The day after tomorrow? Can you clear that on your schedule?’ Of course you can, his voice said. Just to see her again … to experience the slightest touch of her hand. Eh, Steve?
‘I don’t have anything on for lunch Thursday anyhow, so that’s not a problem. And I should bring my . . . my own therapist?’
The fat chuckle came again, shivering in my ear like something just turned out of a Jell-O mold. ‘Do you have one, Mr Davis?’
‘No, actually, I don’t. Did you have a place in mind?’ I .wondered for a moment who would be paying for this lunch, and then had to smile at my own naivete. I reached into my pocket for a cigarette and poked the rip of a toothpick under my thumb-nail instead. I winced, brought the pick out, checked the tip for blood, saw none, and stuck it in my mouth.
Humboldt had said something, but I had missed it. The sight of the toothpick had reminded me all over again that I was floating cigaretteless on the waves of the world. ‘Pardon me?’
‘I asked if you know the Gotham Card on 53rd Street,’ he said, sounding a touch impatient now. ‘Between Madison and Park.’
‘No, but I’m sure I can find it.’
‘Noon?’
I thought of telling him to tell Diane to wear the green dress with the little black speckles and the deep slit up the side, then decided
that would probably be counterproductive- ‘Noon will be fine,’ I said.
We said the things that you say when you’re ending a conversation with someone you already don’t like but have to deal with.
When it was over, I settled back in front of my computer terminal and wondered how I was possibly going to be able to meet Diane again without at least one cigarette beforehand.
It wasn’t fine with John Ring, none of it.
‘He’s setting you up,’ he said. ‘They both are. Under this arrangement, Diane’s lawyer is there by remote control and I’m not in the picture at all. It stinks.’
Maybe, but you never had her stick her tongue in your month when she feels you start to come, I thought. But since that wasn’t the sort of thing you could say to a lawyer you’d just hired, I only told him I wanted to see her again, see if there was a chance to salvage things.
He sighed.
‘Don’t be a putz. You see him at this restaurant, you see her, you break bread, you drink a little wine, she crosses her legs, you look, you talk nice, she crosses her legs again, you look some more, maybe they talk you into a duplicate of the safe deposit key—‘
‘They won’t.’
‘—and the next time you see them, you’ll see them in court, and everything damaging you said while you were looking at her legs and thinking about how it was to have them wrapped around you will turn up on the record. And you’re apt to say a lot of damaging stuff, because they’ll come primed with all the right questions. I understand that you want to see her, I’m not insensitive to these things, but this is not the way. You’re nor Donald Trump and she’s
nor Ivana, burt this isn’t a no-faulter we got here, either, buddy, and Humboldt knows it. Diane does, too.’
‘Nobody’s been served with papers, and if she just wants to talk—‘
‘Don’t be dense,’ he said. ‘Once you get to this stage of the party, no one wants to just talk – They either want to fuck or go home.
The divorce has already happened, Steven. This meeting is a fishing expedition, pure and simple. You have nothing to gain and everything to lose. It’s stupid.’
‘Just the same—’
‘You’ve done very well for yourself, especially in the last five years—‘
‘I know, but—‘
‘—and, for thuhree of those years,’ Ring overrode me, now putting on his courtroom voice like an overcoat, ‘Diane Davis was not your wife, not your live-in companion, and not by any stretch of the imagination your helpmate. She was just Diane Coslaw from Pound Ridge, and she did not go before you tossing flower petals or blowing a cornet.’
‘No, but I want to see her.’ And what I was thinking would have driven him mad: I wanted to see if she was wearing the green dress with the black speckles, because see knew damned well it was my favorite.
He sighed again. ‘I can’t have this discussion, or I’m going to end up drinking my lunch instead of eating it.’
‘Go and eat your lunch. Diet plate. Cottage cheese.’
‘Okay, but first I’m going to make one more effort to get through to you. A meeting like this is like a joust. They’ll show . up in full armor. You’re going to he there dressed in nothing but 1 smile,
without even a jock to hold up your balls. And that’s exactly the region of your anatomy they’re apt to go for first.’
‘I want to see her,’ I said. ‘I want to see how she is. I’m sorry.’
He uttered a small, cynical laugh. I’m not going to talk you our of it, am I?’
‘No.’
‘All right, then I want you to follow certain instructions. If I find out you haven’t, and that you’ve gummed up the works, I may decide it would be simpler to just resign the case. Are you hearing me?’