In that house, were they getting any clues leading to him? Ah, let them follow him now! Instead of leading them to his accomplice, he would throw them off the track! And Artie turned up Hyde Park Boulevard, toward Myra’s. Let Judd sit waiting, worrying.
Suddenly Artie felt keen and light. He laughed out loud, thinking of Judd sitting under his glass cages of stuffed birds, gnawing his fingernails.
• • •
In the gilded lobby of the Flamingo there sat the usual two groups of little ladies in retirement, and Artie could sense the buzz among them as he passed toward the elevators: there goes the brilliant Straus boy, youngest university graduate, they were saying, and surely plotting about catching him for their nieces and granddaughters. This always gave him a kick; he loved the old biddies, ready to lay out all their girlies for him.
Myra’s mother herself opened the door, welcoming him, but with an air of confusion. “Why, Artie! Hello, Artie. It’s so nice to see you, but you know Myra’s just going out.”
Myra bubbled out from her room; she had not quite finished dressing, and was holding a sash for her beaded green frock. He and she always laughed as soon as they saw each other, a kind of surprised and even silly laugh—Well, look at us! And a kind of guilty conspiratorial laugh, like the times as kids when they were almost caught playing doctor. Yet despite the laughter, Myra’s eyes were always melancholy, befitting a poetess, and she talked in breathless rushes of words, curiously like Artie.
Her date was a goof, she said, a football player. She had been roped in, but “When he is silent, I can imagine he is a Greek god. Oh, I want to have lots of lovers, like Edna St. Vincent Millay.”
Her mother, assuming a calm knowingness, always let Myra run on, sure it was all mere talk. And while Myra rushed back to her room to find a poem she had just written, Mrs. Seligman managed to inquire conventionally about his family. How was his mother? How was his father’s blood pressure?
Fine, Artie said, everyone was fine, but Mumsie was rushing to Charlevoix tomorrow morning with little Billy, because of that terrible crime—wasn’t it a monstrous thing? And spying a huge box of candy, Artie poked his finger into one of the chocolates. “Aha! Liquor!” he cried, sucking the finger, and then poking it down the entire row of candies while Mrs. Seligman giggled in horror—“Really, Artie!”
“He’s wacky!” Myra called. He walked into her room.
Myra thrust herself up against him and kissed him briefly, moving the tip of her tongue, and gyrating her abdomen to show she knew how to be wicked. She broke off and pulled back, looking at him intently with her huge brown eyes. “Is anything wrong, Artie?”
The girl made him impatient sometimes with her understanding looks. He said, “Nah, I just got the willies,” and she said he had to hear her new sonnet. She always sent her sonnets to the Line O’Type column in the Tribune, signing them “The Dark Lady,” and occasionally they were printed. The new one lay on her desk, over an open copy of Baudelaire, in French; Myra was trying some translations.
“My Unfaithful Lover” was the title; Artie picked it up and read out loud. “I share my lover with the wingspread sail—”
She shared her lover with the sleet, the gale. He said it was swell.
They were, of course, not lovers. And yet she was in love with Artie; she had loved him since she was a little girl. They were remote relatives, fifty-eleventh cousins they called themselves, Myra always explaining, with a bubble of laughter, that anyone whose family owned Straus stocks was a cousin. Her father had been one of the founders.
She called Artie “lover,” as a kind of promise within herself that it would one day be he. She was sure she knew the Artie others didn’t know; she knew an Artie who was not always shining and being smart, but who was torn. This she cherished as a love secret. Sometimes when they were out together, Artie would admit to having the blues; he would drop his air of good-time frenzy for a despondent silence, and then Myra would feel that he was hers, that she was the only one with whom he could act this way, and she would be sure Artie was much deeper than he let on.
So now he said there was nothing wrong, he just was sick of the world, had a touch of the blues, and that reminded Myra of a terrific place she had heard about, downtown, where they had a wonderful blues singer. It was in a cellar on Wabash. Why not go there tomorrow?
He agreed; maybe they would make it a double date.
Myra groaned. Not Judd.
Well, he had sort of agreed to help Judd celebrate his Harvard exams tomorrow. Why did she always have to pick on Judd?
“Maybe I’m jealous.” Myra laughed without meaning anything. But she simply couldn’t see why he let that dreary drip hang around.
It was not a new argument. Especially if you went in a crowd, she said, Judd was so unlikable, with his conceited ideas, and his eyes that never blinked.
Aw, Artie told her, Judd was a brilliant little sonofabitch, and the reason he was so unpopular was that people knew they were inferior to him.
“I don’t care how brilliant he is, he gives me the creeps,” she said, trying to pin on her sash.
Well, Artie admitted, maybe he let Judd hang around so much partly out of pity because the guy had no friends.
“So you nearly get yourself thrown out of your fraternity for his sake.”
Anyway, Judd would be going abroad in a few weeks.
The bell rang; it was her date. Artie grabbed the sash from Myra, and holding it around his waist, shimmied into the other room. Her mother had just opened the door, and Artie swayed toward the young man there, announcing, “I’m your date. Myra has just been kidnaped.”
“Don’t mind him. He’s my wacky cousin, just dropped in from Elgin,” Myra said, taking the sash, and then Artie solemnly declared that he was sorry he couldn’t join them on their date—he had an appointment to hijack a shipment from Canada. He seized Myra and gave her a passionate kiss in front of the young man and her mother. “Don’t drink any wood alcohol,” he admonished, whisking out of the apartment, laughing.
Why did he let Judd hang onto him? Her question resounded as he walked. Certainly he had been too damn softhearted in letting Judd hang on. Ever since the beginning, every piece of trouble had been on account of Judd, and now Dog Eyes had brought him to the edge of real danger.
Walking on Stony Island, purposely past the police station, Artie was now conducting the trial of Judd Steiner. All-powerful, in his hands was the life-or-death decision.
Take the second summer Judd came up to Charlevoix. They hadn’t seen each other much that year, because that was the year Artie had transferred to Ann Arbor. Morty Kornhauser, from the Ann Arbor chapter of Alpha Beta, was visiting him just then, too.
Sunday morning, Judd had to walk into Artie’s room through the connecting bathroom, to wake him up. They were going canoeing to an island where Artie knew a couple of girls—fishermen’s daughters. As Judd started pulling him out of bed, Artie made a playful grab, and then they were wrestling and fooling around.
And Morty had to walk in. They didn’t even hear him. Morty had a sneaky way of slipping around, with a look of apologizing for intruding. Who the hell knew how much he had watched, before Judd finally noticed him standing there with his mouth open like at some goddam stag show?
Artie made the best of it and said, “Want to join the fun?” But that prig Morty said, “No, I don’t indulge, excuse me”—and walked out.
For a while they lay silent, except for that silly giggle Judd had. There was nothing to laugh about; Morty was the biggest tattler at the frat. Then, when they were putting on their trunks, Judd remarked, “Hey, didn’t that sonofabitch say he can’t swim? It might be dangerous for him in a canoe.”
Their eyes caught, and Judd let out his giggle.